Back in January of 2015, I released a blog post titled Just How Old Is The Earth & Universe?, where I showed that when you add together the genealogies and time-spans presented by scripture, you come up with an Earth and Universe that are 5,909 years old. Something that I didn't say in the article (but that I told people who I shared the article with) was that I was not sure that I had found every possible genealogy and time span in scripture, and that I was open to amending what I had previously written. Lo and behold, I recently found out while sitting in church that I had missed a couple hundred years in scripture.
What I am going to do in this article is I am going to lay out the scriptures I used in the blog post mentioned above, and I am going to add the missing data, which will be written in bold to make it obvious what was missing before. With that being said, let's get this party started.
How Old Does The Bible Say That The Earth & Universe Are?
As we all know, God created Adam on the sixth day of creation. When
Adam was 130, he had a son named Seth (Genesis 5:3). When Seth was 105,
he had a son named Enosh (Genesis 5:6). When Enosh was 90, he had a
son named Kenan (Genesis 5:9). When Kenan was 70, he had a son named
Mahalalel (Genesis 5:12). When Mahalalel was 65, he had a son named
Jared (Genesis 5:15). When Jared was 162, he had a son named Enoch
(Genesis 5:18). When Enoch was 65, he had a son named Methuselah
(Genesis 5:21). When Methuselah was 187, he had a son named Lamech
(Genesis 5:25). When Lamech was 182, he had Noah (Genesis 5:28). When
Noah was 500, he had sons named Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 5:32).
Noah
was 600 years old when the Flood happened (Genesis 6:6), which means
that 100 years had passed between when God warned him about it, and when
it actually happened. According to Genesis 8:13, Noah was 601 when the
water from the flood had completely receeded. According to Genesis
11:10, Shem became the father of Arphaxad two years after the flood.
When Arphaxad was 35, he became the father of Shelah (Genesis 11:12).
When Shelah was 30, he had a son named Eber (Genesis 11:14). When Eber
was 34, he had a son named Peleg (Genesis 11:16). When Peleg was 30, he
had a son named Reu (Genesis 11:18). When Reu was 32, he had a son
named Serug (Genesis 11:20). When Serug was 30, he had a son named
Nahor (Genesis 11:22). When Nahor was 29, he had a son named Terah
(Genesis 11:24). When Terah was 70, he had Abram, Nahor (a different
one), and Haran (Genesis 11:26). When Abram was 100, he had Isaac (Genesis 21:5). When Isaac was 60 years old, Jacob and Esau were born (Genesis 25:24-26). When Jacob was 130 years old, he and the rest of the Israelites moved to the region of Goshen in Egpyt (Genesis 47:27-28).
In Exodus 12:40, we read the following:
“Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years.”
In other words, 430 years passed between Jacob and the Israelites moving to Egypt, and the actual Exodus from Egypt.
In 1 Kings 6:1, we read the following:
“In
the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of
Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month
of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.”
In other words, the Exodus to the fourth year of King Solomon’s reign was 480 years.
The
fourth year of King Solomon’s reign was 966 BC, and the book of Malachi
was written shortly after 433 BC, so that’s a span of 533 years.
The time between the book of Malachi and the birth of Jesus was from 433-5 BC, a span of 428 years.
Luke 3:23 says that Jesus was 30 years old when he began his ministry, and we know from studying the Gospels that Jesus' ministry lasted three years, so Jesus was 33 when he was crucified, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven.
Since this is the year 2016, that would mean that 1,983 years have passed since Jesus ascended to heaven.
When
you add all that up, we find that the universe and the Earth are both 6,126 years old. Most Young Earth Creationists round it down to 6,000 years in order
to make it simple for the sake of argumentation.
Conclusion
As we can see, even students of the Bible like myself can make mistakes or miss key pieces of information when dealing with a subject that requires as much careful reading and digging as this one did. It took me 23 months after the initial blog post to figure out that I had missed some crucial information. At this point, I am pretty sure that I actually have all the different genealogies and time spans provided by scripture, but if you find in your study of scripture that I missed something, please let me know.
With all that being said, all that the missing 217 years did was raise the age of the Earth and Universe of my previous post from being a little under 6,000 years to a little over 6,000 years. In fact, the missing 217 years shows that there are absolutely ZERO gaps in the time-span between Adam's creation and the birth of Jesus; this is why those in the church who oppose the clear Biblical teaching of a 6,000-year-old Earth and universe (namely Old Earth Creationists) are forced to try and insert their billions-of-years belief into the creation account contained in Genesis 1:1-2:3.
To see why the Old Earth Creationist's attempts to fit billions of years into the creation account absolutely fails, watch my recent podcast with Jay Hall below:
In the meantime, while I go to work preparing for my January 22, 2017 presentation at the Institute for Creation Science, and while I work on other projects related to other apologetics topics, I will try to post another written blog post on here before the end of the year. The subject of my next written post will be about false claims that Frank Turek made in September regarding Paul and Jesus not assuming the authority of scripture in their conversations with Gentiles.
Back in July, I created a video blog responding to Frank Turek's objections against Young Earth Creationism, which ended up being a 53-minute smack-down where I rarely had to venture outside the Bible to refute Turek's arguments. You can view the smack-down here:
At the end of the video blog, I called Frank Turek a heretic because he was clearly going against what God said about when and how he made the universe and everything in it. Some of the people who saw my video blog did not like the fact that I called Frank Turek a heretic, so I made a written blog post in August titled Does Denying Young Earth Creationism Make Someone A Heretic? to explain how exactly Frank Turek was a heretic.
Recently, Andy Stanley, a mega-church pastor, said that the Bible was impossible to defend from beginning to end in terms of its historical and origins claims, and that we should just focus on the New Testament and Jesus' resurrection from the dead. After Andy Stanley was challenged on that by Russell Moore, Frank Turek decided to write an article on his ministry's website defending Andy Stanley's arguments.
In order to understand how Frank Turek is sliding further into apostasy by defending Andy Stanley, we need to understand what Andy Stanley's arguments are, and what's wrong with them.
After we understand what is wrong with Andy Stanley's arguments, then we can focus on Frank Turek's defense of Andy Stanley's arguments, and what is wrong with Frank Turek's defense.
Andy Stanley Condemns Defending The Old Testament Via Apologetics
Andy Stanley was recently interviewed by Russell Moore at the 2016 Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission National Conference about his approach to reaching unbelievers. You can watch the whole interview here:
While I was watching the video to see if Andy Stanley would say the things that CMI claims he said in his sermon series, I eventually saw Andy Stanley say this from the 19:24-20:33 marks of the video:
"It's not what the Bible says that's the issue; it's what else the Bible says. And again, when you're dealing with secular people, as soon as you say 'the Bible...', everybody now knows the problems with the Bible. And when I say 'problems', I mean the culture's view of the Bible. In terms of six-day creation, there's no geological evidence of a worldwide flood, there's no evidence for the exodus, there's all kinds of things that people can poke at, poke at, poke at. And when they in their mind can discredit parts, it discredits the whole. The problem is we send too many kids off to college thinking the same way. So they get to a freshman English class or literature class, and somebody pokes holes in the Old Testament, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, but the foundation of our faith isn't the Bible; the foundation of our faith is an event, the Resurrection, and I think in our preaching, it's easy, when you develop the habit, to take every single sermon, every single sermon, and weave it back ultimately to Jesus and ultimately to the resurrection because once you've settled the question of who is Jesus based on the Resurrection, everything unfolds from there, from the beginning of the Bible all the way to an end. It's just an approach."
So as we can see from the quote above, Andy Stanley says that the Bible is not the foundation for our faith because there are problems with the Old Testament's historical claims, mainly that there is no evidence for events like the flood of Noah, the Exodus from Egypt, and the creation of the Earth and Universe in six 24-hour days. Andy Stanley then calls the Bible a fragile house of cards that's just waiting to topple if someone thinks that they need to defend the truthfulness of scripture from Genesis 1:1 to the end.
Andy Stanley tries to get around defending his argument by saying that these problems he listed are things that the secular culture considers to be problems, which implies that Andy Stanley doesn't think they're actual problems with the Bible, but in his sermon The Bible Told Me So from his Who Needs God series, Andy Stanley said the following from the 8:36-11:06 marks: "Why are Christians so afraid? Why are Christians so fearful? Why are we not the most curious people, and scientifically curious people in the world? And I'll tell you why: It's because you were raised in a culture, like I was raised in, and it was all-or-nothing. If anything proves that something in the Bible isn't actually absolutely, historically, scientifically reliable, uh oh! The whole thing comes tumbling down because this version of Christianity is a house of cards, and all you have to do is pull out one card, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards that comes tumbling down when we discover that perhaps the walls of Jericho didn't; when we discover or we're told that perhaps there was no exodus from Egypt to the promised land, and there's no historical evidence of that; when we're told in school and graduate school that there's no evidence for a world-wide flood; when people point out apparent contradictions in the Bible; when in school we're told that there's no way the Earth is 6,000 years old, it's four and a half or 4.55 billion years old, and the universe is 14 and a half billion years old, and all of a sudden the tension is around 'the Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says...' and 'Science has said, science has said...", and all of a sudden there's this extraordinary, extraordinary tension. If the entire Bible isn't true, then let's be honest: The Bible isn't true! I mean if the whole thing isn't true, because you grew up and I grew up, and you grew up in a church in the united states that's basically 'The Bible says it; that settles it! The Bible says it; that settles it!' Then we grow up, we become adults, we become aware of things that make us wonder if everything in the Bible is true. And when we conclude or we come to the conclusion that maybe it's not all as true as we were told it was true, then Christianity comes tumbling down. Christians feel, your parents felt, your pastor felt, perhaps you still feel, the pressure to defend the Bible because if you don't defend the Bible, you can't defend Christianity. This puts the Bible in the center of the debate; this puts the spotlight on the Bible. This puts the Bible in a place where if we can't defend everything in it, then everything in it goes away. And the good news is that is very unfortunate; the great news is, that is absolutely necessary."
Having watched the entire sermon, Andy Stanley does not at any point state that the problems with the Bible he listed are mere objections that unbelievers make up to justify their unbelief, which leads to the conclusion that Andy Stanley really believes that there are problems in the Old Testament that are impossible to defend using apologetics. I don't have time to go into all the evidence behind Andy Stanley's claims because I want to get to Frank Turek's defense as quickly as possible, so I am simply going to show how lazy Andy Stanley was in his research.
I'm not an archaeologist, but I've studied enough about Biblical Archaeology to know that Andy Stanley is dead wrong when he claimed that there is no evidence that the walls of Jericho fell down like the Bible says they did. If Andy Stanley had taken the time to look up "Archaeological Evidence of The Bible" on YouTube, he would have found this Charlie Campbell presentation at Calvary San Diego from back in 2013:
While Campbell goes through many different archaeological evidences that support both the Old and New Testaments, we see Campbell give the archaeological evidence for the walls of Jericho falling down from the 10:45-13:57 marks of the video. Now it took me literally a few seconds to find this video on YouTube; am I really supposed to believe that Andy Stanley doesn't have the time or resources to check out any apologetics materials regarding the walls of Jericho before he goes off into a sermon to say that there is no evidence for the walls of Jericho falling down?
Andy Stanley then says that there is no historical evidence of an exodus from Egypt like Moses describes in the book of Exodus. Aside from the fact that Exodus reads exactly like a typical historical document, and aside from the fact that I could simply tell Andy Stanley that there's a recent documentary on Netflix called Patterns of Evidence: Exodus that aims to provide a bunch of evidence that the Exodus really happened (I haven't found the time to watch the documentary, but my friends who have tell me it's really good), I would like to point out that Jesus himself says that the Exodus happened:
John 6:29-33: "Jesus answered, 'The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.'
So they asked him, 'What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: "He gave them bread from heaven to eat."'
Jesus said to them, 'Very
truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from
heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.'"
As we can see from this passage, Jesus is being challenged by his Jewish audience to perform a miracle in order for them to believe his claims about himself, which we know from the rest of the gospels that they rejected all such evidence that Jesus provided, but in this particular instance, they appealed to the account of the manna and quail in Exodus 16 as a sign they would supposedly accept. After Jesus pointed out to them that it was God the Father who had given them the manna from Heaven and not Moses, Jesus says that the Father gives the true bread of heaven, which gives life to the world. How does this show that Jesus claims that the Exodus happened? Well, most people consider the Exodus to be comprised of not only the Israelites' departure from Egypt and crossing of the Red Sea, but also the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness before arriving at the promised land. Since the manna and Quail incident in Exodus 16 took place during the 40 years in the wilderness, and since Jesus treated that particular account as a historical event by pointing out to his listeners that God had given the Israelites the bread instead of Moses, it's not hard to imagine that Jesus would have treated the rest of the events in the Exodus any differently (In my book Another Inconvenient Truth and in my upcoming presentation at the Institute for Creation Science, I point out a number of hard-to-believe Old Testament miracle accounts that Jesus treated as historical facts). As far as there being no evidence for a world-wide flood, we have yet another instance of Andy Stanly not doing his homework at all. Aside from all the work that Young Earth Creationist ministries have been doing over the decades providing evidence for the Flood of Noah via presentations, videos, and written articles, I myself stepped into the fray last year when I wrote The Flood of Noah is a Historical Fact, an article that showed physical evidence, historical evidence, and Jesus' statements about the Flood that show that the flood of Noah was global. As far as supposed contradictions in the Bible go, It's hard to tell what Andy Stanley's position on that is since he said so little, but for the sake of responding point by point, I invite the readers to read my old blog post The Historicity of Jesus Christ, The Gospels, and The New Testament to see what kind of contradictions we're talking about, and how easy it is to refute most of them.
When it comes to Andy Stanley's claim that there is no evidence that the Earth and universe are 6,000 years old like a plain reading of scripture tells us, this might be the greatest example of Andy Stanley not doing his homework. In my post Just How Old Is The Earth & Universe?, I showed how I got a 6,000 year-old Earth and Universe using just the Bible, and in the previously mentioned Does Denying Young Earth Creationism Make Someone A Heretic?, I showed exactly how Jesus endorsed the Young Earth Creationism timeline in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. I also gave some evidence from science that supports the YEC timeline in the following video blog from 2015:
It might seem like I'm not really addressing Andy Stanley's objections by simply giving links to my previous materials, but my purpose in showing my previous materials is to show that I put in the homework that I needed to do before I went off creating my materials, and to show that it isn't that difficult or time-consuming to do the research. Since he is the pastor of a church, Andy Stanley has no excuse for not doing his homework.
Frank Turek's defense of Andy Stanley
Since I watched all of Andy Stanley's The Bible Told Me So sermon, I saw him promote Frank Turek's book, call Turek his friend, and use some of Turek's arguments to prove the truthfulness of the New Testament; I'm not really surprised that Frank Turek would come to Andy Stanley's defense after the Russell Moore interview. In his article Why Andy Stanley Is Right About The Foundation of Christianity and How To Defend It, Frank Turek said the following:
"Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a friend of Andy Stanley, and he’s used and recommended my book in his current apologetics sermon series.
I do not personally know Russell Moore but do appreciate much of his
work. I’ve tried to be fair in the following assessment. I’ll leave it
to you to decide if I’ve succeeded."
While I appreciate Frank Turek's honesty about his bias, we're going to see the heresies that Frank Turek commits in his blind defense of Andy Stanley. Let's start with this gem:
"First, one can’t even understand the Bible (or any communication) without first understanding truths from outside
the Bible—aspects of the natural revelation such as philosophy, logic,
and consistent cause and effect. In other words, in order to get
anything out of the Bible, you need principles or keys of interpretation
from outside the Bible to access it, much like you need your keys to
unlock your house to get anything out of it. Without keys of
interpretation from the outside, we would never be able to unlock the
Bible to learn what’s in it. While we often take those keys of
interpretation for granted, we get them from the book of nature and the
principles of human communication including language and grammar."
When I first read this paragraph, I couldn't believe what Frank Turek said. There are two ideas that Frank Turek is communicating in this paragraph; the first one is that Frank Turek says that there are objective truths that exist outside of the Biblical worldview. Excuse me Frank, but have you forgotten about what Paul wrote in Colossians 2?!
Colossians 2:1-5: "I want you to know how hard I am contending for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not met me personally.My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ,in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is."
Notice what Paul said in verses 2-4, which is that all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom are hidden in Jesus, which ultimately means that there is no such thing as objective truths that exist outside of the Biblical worldview. Paul even explains in the very next sentence that the reason he's telling his readers this is because he doesn't want them to be deceived by fine-sounding arguments, especially arguments that come from a gifted speaker like Frank Turek
The second point that Frank Turek made in that paragraph above is that we need to use these so-called objective truths that exist outside of the Biblical worldview to reinterpret what we read in the Bible. Frank Turek explains this in more detail in the following paragraph in his article:
"Sometimes we even use what we learn from nature or philosophy to
overrule what appears to be the clear reading of Scripture. The rotation
of the earth around the sun is one such example. Another is the
immaterial nature of God. We use the book of nature and the principles
of human communication to realize that the Bible uses observational
language to describe nature (sun rising and setting) and metaphors to
describe God’s attributes (He has eyes, arms, legs, etc.)."
This paragraph really doesn't surprise me because in his original video on the age of the universe that I responded to, Frank Turek said that the reason he believed that the universe and Earth were billions of years old was because he believed that the laws of physics have never changed; in other words, he took his "we use what we learn from nature and philosophy to overrule what appears to be the clear reading of scripture" attitude that he lays out here, and he applied it to the Bible's clear 6,000-year-old Earth and universe timeline. Frank Turek shows by this action that he has no reverence for God in his heart, and that he rejects scripture as being his final authority.
As I read through Frank Turek's article, I came across the part where he addresses what Andy Stanley had to say about the problems with the Bible, and in trying to defend Andy Stanley's arguments that I dissected in the previous section, Frank Turek makes three claims that are completely contrary to the Biblical worldview. Let's look at each one:
"Let me sum up this important point in another way. The
ontological foundation of Christianity is not a collection of ancient
writings we call the Bible. The ontological foundation of Christianity
is the reality of God and the historicity of the biblical events
including the Resurrection of Christ. (In fact, the New Testament
wouldn’t exist unless the Resurrection occurred.) So while we need all
of the Bible to more fully understand God and live the Christian life,
we don’t need all the Bible to understand its most important message—the
Gospel.
Seriously, Frank Turek?! We don't need all of the Bible to fully understand the Gospel message of salvation? What about what Jesus told his disciples when he appeared to them in Luke 24?
Luke 24:44-49: "He said to them, 'This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.'
Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.He told them, 'This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day,and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.You are witnesses of these things.I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.'”
As we can see from above, Jesus told his disciples that virtually the entire Old Testament wrote about him, and then he tells them that the Gospel message of salvation is based on what the Old Testament scriptures say; Jesus is clearly teaching that you can't fully understand the Gospel message of salvation without understanding the Old Testament, which means that you need all of the Bible to fully understand the gospel message of salvation.
Is Frank Turek even aware that he's contradicting the words of the one he claims to follow? Does he even care?
That was Andy’s reason for saying, “Let’s get the spotlight off the Bible, and back on the Resurrection.” Not for believers, but for unbelievers. Namely, when unbelievers
doubt certain stories in the Bible (such as Noah or Jonah), focus on
the evidence that the Resurrection actually occurred so they don’t throw
the baby out with the bathwater and dismiss the Gospel.
What Frank Turek is saying here is that if unbelievers bring objections to certain historical claims in the Old Testament such as Noah and the Flood or Jonah and the Whale, what we should do is sweep those objections under the rug, not deal with them, and instead focus on the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (and ultimately the New Testament). There are two problems with this:
1) Not dealing with objections to claims in the Old Testament is not an option because Jesus taught in John 3:12 that if we can't trust the Bible when it makes historical and scientific claims, then we can't trust the gospel message of salvation (you can see the more detailed examination of John 3:12 in my recent materials). This means that it is mandatory for Apologists to defend the historical claims in the Old Testament. Because of this, the way that guys like Ken Ham, Thomas Kindell, or JD Mitchell respond to objections like this is they will usually provide evidence supporting the historical claim of the Old Testament in particular before turning the conversation back to the Gospel. This way, they deal with the objection without forgetting to tell the unbeliever what they really need to know.
2) By dismissing the objections to historical claims in the the Old Testament without dealing with them and only focusing on the Resurrection and the New Testament, Frank Turek is creating a New-Testament-Only version of Christianity, and this version of Christianity is a false religion that destroys people's faith in God because they tend to view the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament as being radically different gods; the God of the Old Testament is all about the wrath, and the God of the New Testament is all about the Love in this version of Christianity.
One of my best friends was a nominal Christian for a long time before he walked away from religion, but before he did, he was a NT-Only Christian, and he used to always talk with me and my parents about why God seemed so different in the Old and New Testaments. I think that his NT-Only Christianity may have played a part in him walking away from the faith. So when Frank Turek promotes NT-Only Christianity when he says that we shouldn't deal with the unbeliever's objections to historical claims in the Old Testament, it makes me upset because Frank Turek should know better as an apologist. There's no excuse for him.
That’s Andy’s approach because many in our culture believe that if
you doubt one story in the Bible you can’t believe any of it. Andy’s
apologetic approach defuses that erroneous belief and for good reason.
Believing in Noah and Jonah are not essential to your salvation, but
believing in the Resurrection is!" Well Frank Turek, the reason that so many people in our culture believe that you can't believe in any of the Bible if you doubt one story in the Bible is because Jesus himself taught the concept! In John 3:12, Jesus taught that if you can't trust the Bible when it makes historical and scientific claims, then you can't trust Gospel message of Salvation; this same Jesus went on in his ministry to teach that Noah and Jonah are historical facts, so it turns out that believing in Noah and Jonah ACTUALLY IS essential to your salvation, every bit as much as the Resurrection is. You seem to have a nasty habit of directly contradicting the words of the Jesus that you claim to submit to, and in this particular case, you're saying that what Jesus taught in John 3:12 is an erroneous belief.
Conclusion
So as we bring things to a close, we can see that while Andy Stanley raises objections against the historical claims of the Old Testament, and while he calls the Bible a fragile house of cards, he's also a man who doesn't do his own homework on apologetics topics like this, and he blindly believes what his friend, apologist Frank Turek, tells him about the Bible. This is a problem for Andy Stanley because Frank Turek is a heretic and false teacher.
How is Frank Turek a Heretic? Well, aside from the fact that he rejects the Young Earth Creationism timeline that we get from the Bible (as I documented in my original video blog about Frank Turek), Frank Turek believes in additional heresies: He teaches that objective truths exist outside of the Biblical worldview, that these objective truths outside of the Biblical worldview must be used to reinterpret the Bible, that we don't need all of the Bible to understand the Gospel message of salvation, that we shouldn't focus on defending the historical claims of the Old Testament, and that Jesus was wrong in John 3:12 when Jesus said that if we can't trust the Bible on historical and scientific claims, then we can't trust the gospel message of salvation. To those of you who didn't like it when I called Frank Turek a heretic in my original video blog about him, I have to ask: how many heresies does Frank Turek need to commit before you acknowledge that he's a heretic? Just in this blog post alone, I have documented six serious heresies that Frank Turek is committing, and of those six heresies, five of them directly contradict the words of Jesus.
Let that sink in for a moment. If 83 percent of the heresies that Frank Turek commits directly contradicts the words of Jesus, is Frank Turek really a follower of Jesus? Frank Turek used to be my favorite apologist back when I was an Old Earth Creationist, but with all of his heretical teachings in 2016, I have finally decided to get rid of my copies of his books I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist and Stealing From God. It is my hope that those of you searching for Truth will reject Frank Turek like I have, and that you will not promote his materials in any way. We need to treat him like an unbeliever until he repents and submits to Jesus as the authority over his life and thinking.
For anyone who keeps up with this blog's YouTube page, recently I put out a video blog responding to apologist Frank Turek's most recent video about the age of the universe. You can watch the blog here:
After I had released this video blog and shared it in all the venues that I could, I had a friend message me back about the video with some comments he had. He agreed with me that Frank Turek was way wrong about how long the six days of creation are, but he disagreed with the part of my video where I called Frank Turek a heretic. His argument for why Turek was not a heretic was that Turek did not deny any of the non-negotiable doctrines of Christianity. My friend then went on to say that Turek's view was aberrant, not heretical.
The obvious implication of this line of reasoning is that Young Earth Creationism is not a non-negotiable doctrine of the Biblical worldview, and denying the Young Earth Creationism timeline doesn't make someone a heretic.
In response to this claim, we will rehash what Jesus has said about the age of the universe and earth that I have gone over in my other video blogs, we will go over the dictionary definitions of the words Aberrant and Heretic, and then we will put everything together and talk about the implications.
Before we go on, I want to note that this post is NOT about attacking my friend. My friend understands that the Bible clearly does not teach billions of years, and he recognizes that the YEC timeline is the only timeline that the Bible lays out as being the correct timeline of history. My friend is not a heretic in any way, shape, or form. All I hope to do is show my friend, and others who think like him, that Jesus allows no wiggle room when it comes to the age of the universe and Earth. Jesus taught that the YEC Timeline is true
For those of you who are not familiar with my previous video blogs or my blog post Was Jesus Radical?!, there are two specific passages where Jesus teaches something that can only be true if Young Earth Creationism is true. Here are those passages:
Matthew 19:1-6: When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan.Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?'
'Haven’t you read,' he replied, 'that at the beginning the Creator "made them male and female,"and said, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh"?So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.'"
Mark 10: 1-9: "Jesus
then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the
Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he
taught them.
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?' 'What did Moses command you?' he replied.
They said, 'Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.'
'It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,' Jesus replied.'But at the beginning of creation God "made them male and female.""For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,and the two will become one flesh." So they are no longer two, but one flesh.Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
As we
can see in the above passages, Jesus is clearly saying that man and woman
(Adam and Eve) were created at the beginning of creation. In order to
understand why that teaching can only be true if Young Earth Creationism
is true, please look at the chart below where I graph out the timelines of the most popular interpretations of the creation account of Genesis 1:1-2:3 and insert the creation of Adam and Eve on each timeline:
As we can see in the chart above, if we insert the creation of Adam and Eve into the Gap Theory timeline, we have Adam and Eve being created 6,000 years ago on a 14-billion-year timeline. If we insert the creation of Adam and Eve into the Day-Age Theory timeline, we have Adam and Eve being created roughly 2 billion years ago on a 14-billion-year timeline. Finally, if we insert the creation of Adam and Eve into the Young Earth Creationism timeline, we have Adam and Eve being created on day six of a 6,000-year timeline.
When we look at Jesus' words in Matthew 19:1-6 and Mark 10:1-9, which of these timelines best lines up with Jesus' statement that male and female were created at the beginning of creation? The answer is that it is only the YEC timeline that lines up with Jesus' teaching in Matthew 19:1-6 and Mark 10:1-9.
Definitions of Aberrant and Heretic:
Since my friend brought up the word Aberrant to describe Frank Turek's OEC beliefs, we're going to let the Merriam-Webster Dictionary define the word for us. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the first definition of Aberrant is:
"Straying from the right or normal way."
It should be rightly pointed out that my friend was not incorrect in describing Turek's OEC beliefs as being aberrant; since Jesus clearly taught that the Young Earth Creationism timeline is true as I showed in the section above, and since Jesus is supposed to be the sole authority whose way is right, Turek is clearly straying from the right way when he teaches that the Earth and Universe are billions of years old.
"someone who believes or teaches something that goes against accepted or official beliefs"
Since Turek's teaching that the Earth and universe are billions of years old directly contradicts the clear teaching of the YEC timeline by Jesus in Matthew 19:1-6 and Mark 10:1-9, this means that Turek is teaching something that goes against the official teaching on the age of the Earth and universe that Jesus gave, making Turek a heretic by definition.
Conclusion:
Some of you reading this post might be thinking the following:
"Ok, you've shown us that Jesus endorsed the Young Earth Creationism timeline by teaching that male and female were created at the beginning of creation, but how does this make someone who rejects Young Earth Creationism a heretic?"
If you were thinking that, then I'm glad, because Jesus himself explains how this makes someone a heretic. Let's take a look at John 3:10-15:
John
3:10-15: “'You
are Israel’s teacher,' said Jesus, 'and do you not understand these
things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we
testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our
testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not
believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No
one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the
Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so
the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have
eternal life in him.'”
Verse 12 is the key verse in the passage, where Jesus asks how they can believe him when he speaks about heavenly things in light of the fact that they don't believe him when he talks about earthly things. How does this relate to rejection of YEC being a heresy? It's quite simple:
The age of the Earth/universe qualifies as an earthly thing since it's talking about how old the Earth is, and the Gospel message of salvation is definitely a heavenly thing since it comes from Heaven, so by using substitution, Jesus is clearly saying in John 3:12 that if you can't trust him when he endorses the YEC timeline by teaching that male and female were created at the beginning of creation, then you can't trust his Gospel message of salvation. To teach that the universe and Earth are billions of years old undermines the credibility of the Gospel, according to Jesus, and that makes the YEC timeline of the Bible a non-negotiable doctrine.
So while it's true that someone like Frank Turek believes in many of the non-negotiable doctrines of the Biblical worldview, the fact that he denies one of the non-negotiable doctrines of the Biblical worldview qualifies him as a heretic, regardless of how nice of a guy he is or how many correct beliefs he has.
This makes me think of the character Fritz from the The Chronicles of the Schoenberg Cotta Family, who said the following:
"In speaking of the great truths, of God freely justifying the sinner because Christ
died, (the Judge acquitting because the Judge himself had suffered for the guilty),
I had endeavoured to trace them, as I have said, beyond all human words to their
divine authority. But now to confess Luther seemed to me to have become identical
with confessing Christ. It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests
our fidelity. It is to confess we are called, not merely to profess.
If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every
portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and
the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly
I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier
is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-field besides is mere flight and disgrace
to him if he flinches at that one point."
There is a war going on out in the world: Evolutionistsknow that the evidence against Evolution is staggering, but they also know that their theory will always be plausible so long as everyone believes that the universe and Earth are billions of years old because they'll have all this unobservable time to hide their evolutionary belief in.
So when a Young Earth Creationist like myself attacks their belief in billions of years by pointing out where the belief originated historically, pointing out that the Bible teaches that the Earth and Universe are only 6,000 years old, and pointing out scientific evidence that limits the age of the Earth and universe to only a few thousand years old like the Bible says, the Evolutionist will vehemently attack Young Earth Creationists for taking away the only thing that makes their evolutionary beliefs plausible.
What's really sad is that over the course of the past couple centuries, so many Christians have been indoctrinated into believing that the universe and Earth are way older than what the Bible clearly teaches that they will stand with the evolutionists in condemning Young Earth Creationists for teaching that the Earth and universe are roughly 6,000 years old, regardless of the fact that the Jesus they claim to follow endorses and teaches the YEC timeline.
In the case of Frank Turek, his refusal to accept the YEC timeline proves that his loyalty does not lie with Jesus of Nazareth, no matter how much he thinks he is being loyal to Jesus by affirming all the other non-negotiable doctrines. Frank Turek affirms many non-negotiable doctrines, but when Satan and the World attack the YEC timeline that Jesus and the Bible clearly espouse, Frank Turek joins the world in condemning the YEC timeline instead of being loyal to Jesus and defending the YEC timeline.
My fear for Frank Turek is that if he dies as he currently is, and he stands before Jesus, he will hear the following words:
Last year, I put together a video blog responding to the How To Shut Up Pesky Creationists YouTube video posted by pariskillton back in September of 2007, a video that evolutionists use to this day as evidence of evolution. You can see my video blog below:
Recently, a YouTuber named lobsterfork came across the above video blog and decided to throw some objections to my video blog into the comments section of the video. You can see the ad hominem attacks in his response, but he does state some objections in his comments, and he ultimately agreed to giving me a chance to respond to his objections in writing, so I think it's very important to address his objections so that followers of Jesus can have answers to evolutionist objections like these. lobsterfork's objections
The way that I am going to address lobsterfork's objections is that I am going to put his words in bold, and my responses to his claims will be in the normal font. Let's get started:
Holy s--- man...Where to begin? Your first point you mention that Dr.
Miller 'knows'. Science isn't about knowing. Science is a system of
confident assumptions backed by evidence. The example Dr. Miller gives
is one of the many rigorous tenets of Scientific methodology. A strong
theory must have falsifiable assumptions. Dr. Millers use of chromosome 2
and 13 to demonstrate a chromatic fusion is just a test in which a
negative result completely disproves Evolution. It is not the smoking
gun you desperately want, because a 'true' smoking gun, or 100% proof,
does not exist in Science. Albeit, as far as a smoking gun goes, this is
about as good as it gets. So your point about Dr. Miller 'assuming' is
moot. Science is nothing but the best case assumptions.
I am actually glad that you defined science and the scientific method in this way, because most evolutionists will not be honest and admit that their definition of science and the scientific method are different than the classical definition of the scientific method. You get brownie points for honesty, but now it's time to dismantle this objection.
The classic definition of the scientific method is the following: You observe something happening in nature, you make a hypothesis about the observation, you set up an experiment to verify or falsify your hypothesis, you perform the experiment, and then you analyze the data to see if your hypothesis was verified or falsified. If your hypothesis is verified, and if multiple scientists in different locations perform the same experiment and get the same result as you did every time, then your hypothesis can become a fundamental fact of science.
The classic definition of science and the scientific method is what was taught to me during my time in the public school system, and I have seen many an evolutionist define the scientific method this way when they are trying to convince the public that there is no observational evidence supporting creationism and tons of observational evidence supporting evolution.
The problem with the evolution paradigm is that most of it has never been observed happening in action by any human being: nobody has ever seen one family of animals evolve into another; nobody
has ever seen life come from non-life; nobody has ever seen a planet or
star form; nobody has ever seen the origin of elements higher than
hydrogen, and no human being has ever seen the origin of time, space,
and matter.
The evolution paradigm itself that we're taught in school states that all this evolution happened before mankind came onto the scene, so by definition nobody has ever seen the five definitions of evolution that I listed in the above paragraph occur in reality. The observational evidence that would have to exist for evolution to be true is so non-existent that Stephen Jay Gould made up the term punctuated equilibrium; this is how Wikipedia defines the term:
"Punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that once species
appear in the fossil record they will become stable, showing little net
evolutionary change for most of their geological history. This state is
called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis.
Cladogenesis is the process by which a species splits into two distinct
species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another."
Let me translate that for you: up until the time that Stephen Jay Gould made up this theory, evolutionists could not find a single shred of observational evidence that biological evolution by slow, gradual processes over billions of years was true. Stephen Jay Gould realized that there was no observational evidence supporting evolution, but he still wanted to keep on believing in evolution and teaching it as a fact, so he made up a theory that basically states that biological evolution happened so fast that it left ZERO evidence behind. In other words, not having evidence that evolution occurred counts as having evidence that evolution has occurred.
You might be wondering how Stephen Jay Gould's theory relates to you. it's quite easy: You and your evolutionist brethren today face the exact same problem that Stephen Jay Gould and his evolutionist brethren faced in their time. There is still no observational evidence supporting evolution and its various definitions, and the observational evidence supporting creationism has been mounting for decades, so you and your evolutionist brethren have been forced to redefine the scientific method and science itself to make it not based on observation. Your definition of science and the scientific method forces you to assume that the evolution paradigm is true before you look at any evidence, and when you get around to looking at the evidence that can be observed in reality, you let your presupposition of evolution being true sit in judgement over the observable reality instead of letting the observable reality sit in judgement over your evolution paradigm.
Your definition of the scientific method and science is incredibly self-serving, and it is illegitimate because you and your evolutionist brethren do not have the authority to redefine science and the scientific method in this way. By defining science and the scientific method in this way, you have shown that you really don't care about evidence. You are just like Dr. Scott Todd, who said the following in the article A View From Kansas On That Evolution Debate from the September 30, 1999 issue of Nature magazine:
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an
hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. Of
course the scientist, as an individual, is free to embrace a reality
that transcends naturalism."
Young Earth Creationists like me can give you observable evidence all day that supports Young Earth Creationism and disproves evolution, but you and your evolutionist brethren have illegitimately redefined science and the scientific method to make it so that all our observable data doesn't count, just like Dr. Scott Todd did back in 1999.
You then jump to
silly argument of "You weren't there how do you know". That is not the
point of Science! Science exist to explain phenomena that we cannot
witness firsthand. If we could witness something first hand then that is
an observation. Once you open the "You weren't there" door, where do
you draw the line? Because it appears to me, that the line is drawn for
theories that are inconsistent with your world view. You cannot just
pick and choose which theories you want to believe because some of them
may be in direct contradiction to your ill forged beliefs.
I find this objection hilarious because by saying that science exists to explain phenomena that humans couldn't have witnessed firsthand, you are the one who is opening the door that says that what we can observe in reality does not matter. It doesn't matter that there is no observational evidence for evolution; we should believe that evolution happened because our high priests, the leaders of academia, tell us that evolution is a fact even though they weren't there to see it happen.
By the way, when you makes claims about the past, such as the universe and everything in it came into existence out of nothing with no intelligent intervention before slowly evolving over billions of years, you are making a historical claim. By definition, historical knowledge is different from scientific knowledge. While we gain scientific knowledge through the classical definition of the scientific method, historical knowledge is gained by examining eyewitness testimony from the time period that you are making claims about. Based off that, there is only one account that claims to be an eyewitness testimony about how the universe and Earth came into being, and that account is Genesis 1:1-2:3, which was written by the creator himself, God.
I can already hear you getting ready to say that we can't trust God's eyewitness account that he made documenting how he created the universe and Earth, but in order to claim that God's account is wrong, you would have to know what actually happened. Since every evolutionist who has ever lived was not around at the beginning and throughout history to see the evolution paradigm happen, I have no reason at all to trust the historical claims that evolution makes.
I love how you
say, and I am paraphrasing here, "Dr. Miller assumes that all young
earth creationist can do is say, well that's the way he made it". That
is literally EXACTLY what you did in your next point.Why can't a
designer possibly account for the fused Chromosome? You are talking
about God. Why are you attributing a human standard to God? Isn't that
incredibly blasphemous? An all knowing being can not account for his own
design? What lol?
I can't exactly tell what you're saying here. I don't know what human standard you're referring to that you say I'm applying to God, and you seem to be accusing me of claiming somewhere in my video that God cannot account for his own design, though I don't see any evidence of this anywhere in my video. You really need to go back and rephrase your objection better so that I can deal with it properly. You are so unbelievably confused. It is not the fact
there are fused chromosomes therefore Evolution. It is the fact that if
we cannot account for the missing chromosome then evolution is wrong.
You keep trying to think of Science as this method of absolute proof.
When it is in fact, if anything, it is a method of falsification". He did
not explain how only Evolution could account for the fused Chromosome". Only Evolution can account for the fused Chromosome because, at this
point in time, there is no other falsifiable test which can be conducted
to account for the chromosome fusion. Do you have any other ideas of
how that could have happened? Ideas in which falsifiable predictions can
be made. Probably not. Your argument is an argument from ignorance. As
if asserting there could be other possibilities means there actually
is.
So science is a method of falsification, eh? You really are hanging yourself out to dry here.
According to your own definition, Evolution is not falsifiable. Why do I say that? As I stated in answering your first two objections, the evolution paradigm says that all the various definitions of evolution took place before any humans with the ability to understand and make records of their observations were around, and no evolutionist was around at the beginning of the universe and earth to testify to what happened. Since no evolutionists were present at the beginning of the Earth and universe, and since the evolution paradigm says that evolution happened before humans with the ability to understand what was going on around them and make records of it came around, then evolution cannot be falsified; by definition, evolution not being able to be falsified makes evolution a religious belief about origins that must be accepted by faith.
By contrast, the Biblical worldview (which I espouse and hold on to) is very falsifiable. For example, in Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 48:12-13, and 51:13, God says that he is the one who causes the universe to expand. If what God says is true, then we would naturally predict that the universe will be expanding when we observe it; if the universe is not expanding when we observe it, then God would be wrong, and we'd have no reason to trust him. Thankfully, the expansion of the universe was verified when Edwin Hubble found the red light shifts in 1927.
One more example: in Psalm 102:25-27, it says that God made the Earth and universe, and that the Earth and universe are wearing out like a garment before eventually getting discarded. Romans 8:18-21 teaches that everything is the universe is decaying. If what the Bible says in Psalm 102 and Romans 8 is true, then we should see the universe itself and everything in it wearing out and falling into disorder over time when we observe the universe and everything in it; otherwise, God would be wrong on this statement and we wouldn't be able to trust anything he has to say about salvation (John 3:12). Lo and behold, the Law of Entropy states that the universe itself and everything in it is wearing out over time, to the point that it will all die off at some point in the future. Funny how the Bible said the same thing a couple thousand years in advance.
In short, Evolution is not falsifiable, and is therefore unscientific, while the Biblical world view is falsifiable, and has yet to contradict anything we observe in reality. The law of entropy in a CLOSED system would disprove
Evolution, but that isn't even a point worth mentioning. The earth is
not in a closed system of entropy. We receive energy from the Sun at a
constant rate. If there was no Sun feeding energy to our planet, then it
is pretty obvious that life could not evolve because there would be no
life, lol.
The problem with this objection is that in order to test and ultimately verify the Law of Entropy, we had to perform the experiments on Earth. Since the Law of Entropy was verified by experiments which were performed on Earth, that logically means that the Law of Entropy works on open systems as well as closed ones. Evolutionists have known this since the 70s, but they have never dealt with the problem; they just sweep it under the rug.
But like I pointed out in my response to your first objection, the way you define science and the scientific method allows you to dismiss any evidence that disproves evolution without anything that remotely resembles a well-thought-out response or reason.
I just cannot go anymore. You arguments are fallacious and
absurd.
You can claim that my arguments are fallacious and absurd, but as I showed in answering your first objection, you define science and the scientific method in a way that is completely self-serving and that allows you to suppress and reject any evidence that disproves evolution. You and your evolutionist brethren have to redefine science and the scientific method because if you stuck with the classic definition of science and the scientific method, and you allowed the evidence for Young Earth Creationism to be presented alongside the "evidence" for evolution, you would have the problem that Atheist Eugenie Scott described on page 23 of Where Darwinism Meets The Bible: "In
my opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for
critical-thinking exercises in primary and secondary schools is
virtually guaranteed to confuse students about evolution and may lead
them to reject one of the major themes in science."
I don't know about you, but most evolutionists think just like Eugenie Scott does. Even though they've got 70 percent of people 30 and younger believing in evolution and rejecting Biblical creationism, they can't stand the idea of even one young person leaving evolution in favor of Young Earth Creationism (which is part of the Biblical worldview) on the basis of observable evidence.They won't be satisfied until everyone becomes an evolutionist, so your current-day evolutionist brethren illegitimately redefine science and the scientific method to make it not based on observable evidence, and much like Dr. Scott Todd, you discount any observable evidence that supports the Biblical worldview being true. If anyone's arguments are fallacious and absurd, it's the ones you put forth in the comments section of my video blog.
The deity of Jesus, or the doctrine of Jesus being God in human form, is at the very core of the Biblical worldview. Jesus specifically claimed and taught that he was the 2nd member of the Trinity (see The Trinity: Biblical or Unbiblical?). Naturally, there are people who claim that Jesus never claimed to be God; that's to be expected. What's really sad though is that there are people who call themselves followers of Jesus who claim that Jesus never once proclaimed to be God.
One such person is Rick Gedeon, the pastor/head of the Columbiana Restoration Church Of God. In a YouTube video titledJohn 5: 44 and 10:36: Jesus never claimed to be God!, Rick tried to prove that Jesus never claimed to be God by looking at John 5:44 and John 10:36, and the verses that immediately preceded each one. He would quote those verses to show that the Jews thought that Jesus was making a claim to deity, and that Jesus was supposedly correcting their incorrect interpretation of his statements. We are going to analyze why the claims made by Gedeon are not true, and I am going to present different occasions where Jesus himself made claims to be God in various ways. Responding To John 5:44 Returning to what pastor Gedeon said, let's take a look at his "evidence" that Jesus denied being God. Let's read John 5:44 in context so that we can see what exactly Jesus said:
John 5:41-44: "I do not accept glory from human beings,but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?"
According to Gedeon, when Jesus said in verse 44 that the Jews didn't seek the glory that comes from the only God, he was supposedly correcting the Jewish leaders' faulty understanding of what Jesus said in John 5:17. Let's read what Gedeon is talking about:
John 5:16-18: "So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.In his defense Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.'For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God."
According to Gedeon, when Jesus called God his father in verse 17, the Jewish leaders incorrectly understood that Jesus was making himself equal with God (which would make him God), and Jesus was simply correcting their understanding at the end of verse 44 by stating that there is only one God.
Looking at verses 41-44 of John 5, I already see a claim Jesus made that proves that he is God: Notice in verses 41-42 how Jesus told his Jewish listeners that he knew them and that they did not have the love of God in their hearts. The question we should be asking is, how could Jesus possibly know the hearts of his listeners so well that he knows that they have no love for God if he was not God? Wouldn't he have to be able to see into their hearts like John 2 says he could? John 2:23-25: "Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name.But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people.He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person."
As we can see from this passage in John 2, Jesus in his first coming knew what was in each person, and that's why he knew all people. This is why in John 5 it was perfectly logical for Jesus to say to the Jewish leaders that he knew them, and that he knew that they had no love of God in their hearts. How does this prove that Jesus was claiming to be God? King Solomon said the following in 1 Kings 8 as part of a prayer of dedication directed to God in the presence of the whole assembly of Israel: 1 Kings 8:37-40: "When famine or plague comes to the land, or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers, or when an enemy besieges them in any of their cities, whatever disaster or disease may come,and
when a prayer or plea is made by anyone among your people Israel—being
aware of the afflictions of their own hearts, and spreading out their
hands toward this temple—then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive and act; deal with everyone according to all they do, since you know their hearts (for you alone know every human heart),so that they will fear you all the time they live in the land you gave our ancestors."
According to what God told Solomon in 1 Kings 3:12 and what 1 Kings 4:29-34 says, King Solomon was the wisest man who has ever lived and will ever live, and it is this King Solomon who says that only God knows every human heart. Let's see what the Psalmist had to say:
Psalm 44:20-22: "If we had forgotten the name of our Godor spread out our hands to a foreign god,would not God have discovered it, since he knows the secrets of the heart?Yet for your sake we face death all day long;we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
So according to verse 21 in Psalm 44, God knows the secrets of the heart, which is something that no human being can ever know. Jeremiah provides us with some interesting information:
Jeremiah 17:10: "I the Lord search the heartand examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct,according to what their deeds deserve.”
According to the prophet Jeremiah, God searches the hearts and examines the minds of all people, and rewards each person according to what they deserve. So let's put all this together in reverse order: According to 1 Kings 8:37-40, Psalm 44:20-22, and Jeremiah 17:10, God searches the heart and examines the mind, he can see the secrets of the heart, and God is the only one who knows every human heart. Since Jesus claimed to know that the Jewish leaders he was talking to had no love of God in their hearts, and John 2:23-25 states that Jesus knows all people and what is in each person, it it quite clear that Jesus is making a claim to be God in the exact passage that Gedeon is trying to use to show that Jesus never claimed to be God. Response to John 10:36 Much like John 5:44, Gedeon only looks at the verses immediately before his proof verse to make it seem like Jesus was refuting their incorrect understanding of his statements. Let's look at the entire context so we can see where Gedeon's error is: John 5:22-39: "Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter,and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, 'How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.'
Jesus answered, 'I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.I and the Father are one.'
Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him,but Jesus said to them, 'I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?'
'We are not stoning you for any good work,' they replied, 'but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.'
Jesus answered them, 'Is it not written in your Law, "I have said you are 'gods'"?If he called them "gods," to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside—what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, "I am God’s Son"?Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father.But
if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works,
that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the
Father.'Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp."
Now that we know what the entire context for this verse is, let's look at Gedeon's argument: Gedeon asserts that in response to what Jesus said in verses 25-30, the Jews picked up stones to stone Jesus because they understood that he was claiming to be God (verses 31-33). According to Gedeon, what Jesus said in verses 34-36 was a correction of the Jew's incorrect understanding that Jesus was claiming to be God. There are problems with this argument, naturally.
First off, Gedeon conveniently ignores the rest of Jesus' quote that appears in verses 37-39, where Jesus essentially says that they should believe his claim to be God on the basis of evidence before he claims yet again to be one with the father, causing the Jews to try to stone him yet again. If Jesus was supposedly trying to communicate to them that he is not God, then why would he right away speak in such a way that they understood that he was claiming to be God in human form? That seems awfully deceptive if it were true.
Fortunately for us, there is one instance in the gospels where Jesus performed a miracle specifically to support his claim to be God in human form. If you've read chapter 6 of Another Inconvenient Truth, or if you've read my old blog post Faith in Jesus: Blind or Evidence-based?, then you know that I am referring to Mark 2:
Mark 2:1-12: "A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.Since
they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an
opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered
the mat the man was lying on.When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 'Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?'
Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, 'Why are you thinking these things?Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Get up, take your mat and walk"?But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.' So he said to the man,'I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.'He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'”
Notice how in verses 6-7, when Jesus told the paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven, the teachers of the law understood that Jesus was making a direct claim to deity. How they come to this understanding? They probably had Isaiah 43 in mind: Isaiah 43:25: "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake,and remembers your sins no more."
If you know the context of Isaiah 43, then you know that verses 14-28 are the words that God wanted Isaiah to tell to the people of Israel. What you will also notice is that the context around verse 25 doesn't change the meaning of verse 25 when it's taken out of context. What does this mean? It means that in Isaiah 43:25, God is claiming to be the one who forgives our sins, and by implication, God is the ONLY one who forgives sins. The teachers of the law understood it that way, and since they rejected Jesus, they viewed Jesus' forgiving the man's sins as a blasphemous claim. Notice how in verse 8 of Mark 2, it says that Jesus knew they were thinking this in their heart; doesn't that sound familiar? It should, because as we saw when I dissected John 5:36, it is once again stated that Jesus knows what is in the hearts of his listeners, an ability that only God has. Also notice how Jesus responds to their accusation. Jesus tells them that he wants them to know that he has the authority to forgive sins (which only God has the authority to forgive sins), and then he performs the miracle of healing a paralyzed man. In short, when we look at the immediate context of John 10:36, we find that Jesus was telling them that he was God, and that they should believe his claim to be God in human form on the basis of the evidence, evidence like what we see in Mark 2:1-12. Conclusion So, after looking at Gedeon's supposed evidence from the gospels that Jesus denied being God in human form, it turned out that Jesus was claiming to be God in the very context that Gedeon was pulling his verses from. These kind of arguments are what you would expect from Muslims and Muslim apologists, not someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus. By denying that Jesus claimed to be God, pastor Gedeon has identified himself as a heretic. Aside from showing that the context around Gedeon's proof verses has Jesus saying and doing things only God can do or say, there are other passages in the Gospels where Jesus makes a claim to deity. For example, we read the following in Matthew 21: Matthew 21:14-17: "The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.But
when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful
things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, 'Hosanna
to the Son of David,' they were indignant.
'Do you hear what these children are saying?' they asked him.
'Yes,' replied Jesus, 'have you never read, "From the lips of children and infantsyou, Lord, have called forth your praise"?'
And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night."
As we can see, the children at the temple were worshiping Jesus, and the religious leaders were upset by that. They wanted Jesus to stop, but Jesus referred to Psalm 8 to justify allowing the children to worship him. In Psalm 8, children are praising God, and yet Jesus refers to that psalm to justify allowing children to worship him! It's almost like Jesus considered himself to be God.
We find another instance of Jesus making a claim to be God in Matthew 11:
Matthew 11:27: "All things have been committed to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father
except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
What a claim by Jesus! Jesus claims that not only is he so incomprehensible that it takes God the father to fully understand and comprehend him, but that he is the only one who can fully understand and comprehend God the father, and that he can choose who he wants to reveal God the father to. It almost sounds like Jesus was making himself equal with God, which is the very thing Jesus was doing in John 5:16-18. In response to the question, "Did Jesus ever claim to be God?", the answer is a resounding yes. He claimed to be able to see into everyone's heart (John 5:41-44, John 2:23-25), which something that only God can do. Jesus claimed that people should believe his claims to be God on the basis of the evidence (John 10:22-39), evidence such as when he performed a miracle to prove to the teachers of the law that he had the authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:1-12), which is something only God can do (Isaiah 43:25). Jesus referred to a psalm where children are worshiping God (Psalm 8) to justify allowing children to worship him (Matthew 21:14-17). Finally, Jesus claimed that he was so incomprehensible that only God the father could fully comprehend him, and likewise that he was the only one who could fully comprehend God the father, making himself equal with God (Matthew 11:27).
