Human Resource: Cog in a Machine

The term human resource makes man out to be a mere expendable machine. He is nothing more than a cog in a machine.  This mentality is why we immediately start asking people for something without even acknowledging their humanity (that is being made in the image of God). Instead of at least saying hello, we just rattle off a list of demands. No 'thank you' or 'you're welcome'.  After all, I don't say 'thank you' to my computer when it works, so, assuming that people are merely evolved machines, why should I acknowledge those more complex machines we call human beings?

When man abandoned the Biblical worldview, he left himself in a state of misery.  In his attempt to become liberated from God and live in autonomous indulgence, he diminished his value to nothing.  Before, he was created in the image of God; now he is but an expendable part that is worthless once it cannot produce any more. This is the end of evolution: a black hole of despair, which is the focal point of government education.

However, God does sit on the throne, and man does have value because he is made in the image God. Therefore, show respect to those around you by acknowledging their presence before giving them a laundry list of things you 'need' them to do.

In saying that, it is a reminder that our loyalty must be towards God, His Church, and our families first. All else tends to view man as a mere machine.  Truly, will your corporation or government employer be there for comfort when you are in ailing health or on your death bed?  No, so be careful where your highest loyalty and commitment lies.

Kind vs Species

Noah's Ark has been a vessel of ridicule for quite some time. One popular caricature is the impossibility of Noah taking two of every species aboard the Ark.  This entire issue is laid to rest by simply reading the text. 

First of all, only the land animals were taken on the Ark. That solves most of the problems because much of the animal kingdom lives in the water. Besides, though many marine animals were buried in the Flood waters, a large number would have been able to survive and procreate, thus they would have not needed the Ark.

Second of all, the Bible doesn't use the word species; rather, it uses kind. To understand what that is, we have to go back to Genesis 1.  God created the kinds to multiply after themselves.  This implies a set order that then produces many variations from those original created kinds.  Created kinds would then best be understood at the genus or even family levels (ie dog/wolf kind, etc.).

As for dinosaurs, most were quite small, and Noah probably took juvenile representatives for the larger ones, which ensures longer procreation. However, because the climate was different after the Flood, their ability to multiply and adapt was likely limited.  Those that did survive for a time were probably hunted into extinction, while the rest died off because of the climate, disease, etc.

The real problem is not the Ark; it is rather a biased worldview that is exposed by the text itself. Man hates God and can only develop straw men, which only magnifies the holes in his arguments against the Bible.

Defining Worldview

Worldview has been defined in numerous ways, yet it usually encapsulates both thought (known or unknown) and action.  It can be simply defined as that body of beliefs (known or unknown) that one treasures and applies to life.  I use the term treasure because where your treasure is, there your heart lies. I say known or unknown because there some things that we acknowledge as part of our belief system and other things that are there but that we may suppress or be ignorant of.  Furthermore, what your heart treasures will be expressed in thought, deed, and word.  This is to imply that whatever a man treasures as his system of belief will then be intrepeted and applied to all of life according to these respective principles which he then proclaims and lives out.

No one is without a worldview, which means that no one is unbiased.  Bias is not always negative, but it is there.  For example, a judge that treasures life will not be very lenient on a convicted murderer.  Likewise, a NAZI will see no problem murdering Jews becuase his worldview rejoices in it.  Bias is important to point out because many people believe that they are or can be unbiased.  However, this is an impossible position because everyone sees the world through some type of lens.  This affects everything from how one understands knowledge to why one justifies behavior, and it is magnfied in education, religion, and politics.

In the New: Death of Christopher Hitchens

Prominent evolutionist Christopher Hitchens has died. He was an ardent anti-Christian, yet he was still a man made in the image of God.  Though we do not endorse his message, we do mourn his unrepentant heart, unless there was a recent unknown conversion to Christ.  Today is the day of salvation, and no man knows the number of his days.  Let each man take heed, for our days our numbered as well.

It is always a sad commentary to see great intellect used for the ills of an evolutionary worldview, and Hitchens had a passion for the evolutionary worldview.

Ironically, every false worldview must steal from the Christian worldview in order to argue against it.  How?   The Christian worldview is the only worldview that possesses the preconditions for intelligibility.  What is that?  Preconditions are those conditions that come beforehand and intelligibility is the ability to make something meaningful and understandable.

The Triune God is the bedrock of meaning, knowledge, logic, ethics, etc.  Apart from Him, there is no such thing as these concepts or even the concept of a concept; it would be an illusion at best, which itself is a concept.  In this, we see that the non-Christian assumes the Biblical God and all that He accounts for in order to then argue against Him.  Van Til once wrote that this is like a father who must put his child on his knee in order for the child to slap his father in the face.  This is no different.

Man is totally depraved, and his suppression of the truth in unrighteousness is magnified by his unwillingness to submit to Him who is the foundation of all things, for man would rather die in unbelief, judgement, and inconsistency than surrender to God in Christ. What foolishness!

To Him be the glory! Amen!

America's Atheocracy

Those who oppose Christ regularly erect the straw man that any effort to impart Biblical principles into our society is an attempt to establish a theocracy. Not only is this dishonest, but it is also deceptive.

1) It is dishonest because from the Foundation of America, Christian Statesmen were not advocating a theocracy but a Constitutional Republic that is based on Biblical principles. Lest one challenge this, a specific example is warranted. The very assumption of original sin is clearly implied in the Constitution, for, when one reads the documents that surround it like the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, the inherent sinfulness or evil bent of man from birth is clearly expounded upon. The fundamental difference is that both sides were at odds on how to contain sin within a fallen society.

2) It is deceptive because some worldview will win the day at any given time, and what is alleged to be secular and thus neutral is a lie. On the contrary, we are becoming and have set the stage for an Atheocracy.

How would I define an atheocracy?

If a theocracy, namely a Christian theocracy, is a government based on the Bible and executes harsh punishment for any violation of Biblical Law wherein the Kingdom is manifested in its glory visibly, then an atheocracy is a society wherein God or any semblance of God is removed from all facets of life, especially public life. Any attempt to introduce God into the picture is rejected and condemned as a religion against the state.

If this sounds familiar, then you should not be surprised, for our nation is being overrun by formal and practical atheists in all parts of government and public life. All of this is done under the disguises of tolerance, acceptance, approval, and neutrality.

How shall we then live?

"Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord!" proclaims the Scripture. Though we surely defend liberty of conscience, we must never agree that an atheistic style of government whereby the Lord God is defamed and ridiculed is the pinnacle of good government. Rather we must explain how a worldview affects a society and then boldly defend why a system of government based on Biblical worldview principles is the best system of government in a fallen society. It is the only system within a fallen society that exercises restraint with liberty of conscience on the one hand while maintaining justice and order on the other.

No other worldview can accomplish such balance because they are all based on the whimsical philosophies of fallen man and thus have no absolute basis for Law. Governments based in human philosophy always result in the tyranny of one, an elite, or just mob rule.

If an atheocracy is what we desire, then we truly deserve all of the horrendous fruits that it bears. Exhibit A: Joseph Stalin. Any questions?

The Great Divorce Remarried Part 2: Geology

A lot of water over a little time or little water over a long time?  

That was the geological hot-button in the late 18th century through the beginning of the 19th. Before the advent of uniformitarian thought in the West, most geologic structures in the Western Christianity were interpreted through a Young Earth & a recent Global Flood lens.  Though the specifics were not known, this was the general way of thinking because the people, including the scientists (like Newton), took the Bible as the ultimate authority source, especially during and after the Reformation.  Now they knew that the Bible did not go into detail on such issues, but the historical reality of the Flood would leave reminders.

However, as the Scripture was being attacked by humanistic thinking on theologic and philosophic grounds, it was also being attacked on historical grounds.  When the history of the Bible in Genesis was denied, a wide range of emerging scientific philosophies took root. The predominant view popularized by Charles Lyell in the 19th century was uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the scientific model that the present is the key to the past--i.e. most geologic structures are formed slowly over eons of time.  However, Lyell was no mere unbiased objector of the truth.  On the contrary, not only was he a rabid anti-Christian, he pushed his philosophy of uniformitarianism with great veracity, and many people bought into it. Alleged great eons of time was now theoretically available to then push the molecules to man evolution, and this is exactly what spearheaded Darwinian thought several decades later. Macroevolution (molecules to man) was already being propagated, but Darwin could popularize the teaching because of Lyell's time scale.  

We deny that the earth is billions of years old and uphold the Global Flood because of our commitment to Scripture.  Nonetheless, how has this theory of uniformitarianism stacked up in the scientific community?  Not to our surprise, many evolutionary scientists themselves deny that the earth has come to be slowly one sand grain at a time by one drop of water at at time.  Though most of them believe the earth is old, due to other philosophic assumptions they make, they do acknowledge that the geologic layers are filled with catastrophe.  Mass fossil graveyards are interpreted as occurring through catastrophic events.  

We should not be surprised when we see evidence for a global catastrophe because that is exactly what is recorded in Scripture, primarily through the Genesis Flood.  We interpret such catastrophic layering, fossil formation, mountain building, and canyon erosion through the lens of Scripture.  Much of the upper level topography that we observe today is best interpreted as being caused by the Flood or by post-Flood events like the Ice-Age and subsequent smaller local scale catastrophes.  

As for geologic structures like the Grand Canyon, we can best understand them through Biblical glasses. Only the Scriptures give us a reliable lens to interpret the world, and, though our scientific models are modified at times, the general creation model itself is sustained by Scripture.  Though it is difficult do delineate exactly what may have been formed during creation week and what has been formed after that through the Flood, we can get a general idea.  Much of the upper layers of the canyon are formed through rapid sedimentation laid down by water.  We can see this through 'bent layering', which is to say that we see many layers flowing together and then bent in one or many directions while still soft.  This must of have occurred rapidly while soft; otherwise, the layers would have been crushed upon themselves. 

As for the canyon itself, it is likely that it formed after the layers had been laid down during the Flood. Sometime before and at the end of the Flood or most probably after the Flood, giant inland lakes once existed in that area (as understood through topographical scars of such lakes).  There was a breached dam of some sort, it appears, and this could have occurred at the end of the Ice Age.  As the glaciers began to melt, large quantities of water would fill these lakes by means of rivers and such.  Eventually the lakes would have overflowed, and a water pouring out by means of a massive catastrophic breached dam would have carved out the Grand Canyon.  

The Bible had it right all along! Amen!

The Great Divorce Remarried Part 1: Sola Scriptura

Sola Scriptura

For the last two centuries, evolutionary old-earth thinking has blasted at the roots of Christianity, and this started in Genesis.  Sadly, the Church (being heavily influenced by humanist thinking beforehand) caved in and began to compromise the Word of God in numerous areas.  Truly, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Ps 11:3)  Christ cannot be our Redeemer if He is not first our Sovereign Creator, which John 1:1-3 explicitly states.   

What happens when Biblical Authority is denied? Sin runs wild, and man plunges into further darkness as a result.  How did this occur in the West?  Sin took root through evolutionary humanistic old-earth dogma; this was brought upon us from atheists, agnostics, and deists of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries who hated everything Scriptural.  A Great Divorce then occurred between the theology of the Bible and how we interpret the natural world around us.  Sadly, the clergy caved in to this, lest they be considered outdated and un-educated. Instead of interpreting the natural world through a Biblical lens, the authority, sufficiency, inerrancy, and inspiration of Holy Scripture was denied. That is, we left Sola Scriptura as the framework for our worldview. In its place, old-earth evolutionary humanism erected itself as the new lens by which all things should be interpreted through. The ramifications took hold quickly, and the West plunged itself into moral anarchy and lawlessness.  

Nevertheless, God's Word is the Only True Authority by which to understand all of reality, for His Word never returns empty and always accomplishes its purpose (Is 55:11). Praise God for His powerful Word! Amen!  How then do we remarry the Bible with historical and scientific reality again?  Many Christians fight issues like abortion and rightly so, but they do so without the underpinnings of Biblical Authority from Genesis to Revelation.  We must begin by asserting all of the Bible as authoritative from beginning to end.  The Bible is not a physics textbook, but, when it speaks on matters of biology, geology, history, it is always absolutely  without error.

Therefore, we must begin to rebuild the foundations that have been beaten down as we raise God's Word to its rightful position of authority (Is 58:12)! Amen!  We are then able to box without our hands tied behind our backs.  Instead, we attack the root of godlessness, which is sin, however that is manifested, and then launch heavily against the fruits of godlessness at the same time! Amen!

To Him be the glory! Amen!