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.
However, that very same Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a heretic as the following:
"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: Evolutionists know 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:
"I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!"
