The 23 Enigma

Consider the primes:  2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 ...

The first two primes are 2 and 3, put them together and get 23.

3³ – 2² = 27 – 4 = 23

V = 5 = 2+3 => 23

There are 23 Definitions in Euclid’s Elements.

Georg Bush is often called “W” which is the 23^rd letter.  George and Laura are both from Midland, Texas (state unemployment record holder).  Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States, served between Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms.  NED  =>  14+5+4=23  (where A=1, B=2 … N=14).  Samuel Morse's original 1844 message was "What hath God wrought" (Num. 23:23).   

On a standard keyboard W (the 23^rd letter) is right between the 2 and 3 in the next row => 23.  If you do have a hang-up about 23, be sure to stay away from microspectrophotometers (23 letters).

Charles Darwin wrote his book on the theory of Evolution in 1859 => 1 + 8 + 5 + 9 = 23.  Both mother and father contribute 23 chromosomes to the DNA of a child.  A day is actually 23 hours (rounded down)‼  Well, that’s the sidereal day and it’s about 23 hours and 56 minutes.  The regular day of 24 hours is the time between two noons.  Earth's axial tilt is 23.4 degrees

The plane crash that killed Buddy Holly (from Lubbock), Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper (“The Day the Music Died”) occurred on 2-3-1959:  (2-3) + 1+9+5+9  = 23!  Austrian composer Alban Berg (d. 1935) was obsessed with the number 23.  Berg’s opera Wozzeck was completed in 1922.  Excerpts from Wozzeck were performed in 1924.  1923 is in the middle.

84 = (2*2*3) * (2+2+3) ≈ 2² + 2π² + 3e³ = 83.996

Notice the 2’s and 3’s => 23

String the first few primes together:  2 3 5 7 11 13 => 23,571,113 (23 evenly divides this number).

23 also divides 423,571,113,171,923 which is made from the primes from 2 to 23 with a 4 in front.

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Ps. 23:1).  Only if the Lord is our Shepherd can we find true peace and happiness.  Sin is our biggest problem, “… you have sinned against the LORD; and be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23).

Who wrote Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch?  Leviticus 23:23 gives the answer, “the LORD spake unto Moses.”  For many years the Books of Moses, including Genesis 1-11, have been ignored and treated as myth.  The children of Israel did something similar:

Then the king commanded all the people, saying, "Keep the Passover to the LORD your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant."  Such a Passover surely had never been held since the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah.  But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this Passover was held before the LORD in Jerusalem (2 Kings 23:21-23).

We do not wish to promote kabbalism or numerology, but these patterns are definitely “fascinating.”  The late Harold Camping (d. 2013, 20+1*3=23), used numbers and Scripture in a very dangerous manner.  One can get 23 from just about anything.  The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster began on 3-11-2011 =>

3+11 + (20-11) = 23‼  The Twin Towers tragedy occurred on 9/11/2001 => 9+11+2+0+0+1 = 23.

Buy truth—don’t sell it for love or money; buy wisdom, buy education, buy insight (Pr. 23:23, Msg).  If we don’t repent of ours sin and place our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are doomed to eternal torment and have no hope of heaven.

Friends, let me go over the Message with you one final time - this Message that I proclaimed and that you made your own; this Message on which you took your stand and by which your life has been saved. (I’m assuming, now, that your belief was the real thing and not a passing fancy, that you’re in this for good and holding fast.)  The first thing I did was place before you what was placed so emphatically before me: that the Messiah died for our sins, exactly as Scripture tells it; that he was buried; that he was raised from death on the third day, again exactly as Scripture says; that he presented himself alive to Peter, then to his closest followers, and later to more than five hundred of his followers all at the same time, most of them still around (although a few have since died); that he then spent time with James and the rest of those he commissioned to represent him; and that he finally presented himself alive to me (1 Cor. 15:1-8).

Life is Short

After suffering a series of strokes, on February 25, 2006 Henry Morris, the founder of modern creationism, passed on to his reward at the age of 87.  He participated in over 100 debates, many with Duane Gish, against such evolutionists as Kenneth R. Miller and David B. Kitts (my History of Science Professor).

 Duane T. Gish (Evolution? The Fossils Say NO!) died at the age of 92 on March 5th, 2013.  He had a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.  Gish was in more than 300 formal debates and won them all!  Gish even debated Phil Donahue (The Human Animal)!

Delmar Hopkins at the age of 105 still works!  He works at Remington Park in Oklahoma City.  Hopkins was the youngest of nine children and grew up in Honey Grove, Texas.  He built ships and planes during World War II.

Five for Fighting has a thoughtful song “100 Years”:

… 15 there's still time for you

Time to buy and time to lose

15, there's never a wish better than this

When you only got a hundred years to live

I'm 33 for a moment

Still the man, but you see I'm a "they"

A kid on the way, babe.

A family on my mind

Half time goes by

Suddenly you’re wise

Another blink of an eye

67 is gone

The sun is getting high

We're moving on...

I'm 99 for a moment

And time for just another moment

And I'm just dreaming

Counting the ways to where you are …

O Lord, make me know my end

and what is the measure of my days;

let me know how fleeting I am!

Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,

and my lifetime is as nothing before you.

Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah

Surely a man goes about as a shadow!

Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;

man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!

Ps. 39:4-6 (ESV)

So teach us to number our days

that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Ps. 90:12 (ESV)

[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

2 Tim. 1:9-10 (ESV)

Adam lived for 930 years and Shem lived to be 600 years old.  Did they think that "life is short?"  How wise did they get after living for hundreds of years?

What’s in Your Study Bible?

All good evangelical study Bibles teach that we are saved by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ alone (Eph. 2:8, 9; Titus 3:5-7).  The Henry Morris Study Bible (formerly The Defender’s Study Bible) and The MacArthur Study Bible are highly regarded, but how can we spot a pro-Creation study Bible?  The next time you go to your Christian bookstore and browse look for the following:

1)  Is Genesis 1:1 the beginning?

2)  Creation in Six Days (CISD)

3)  Global Flood

4)  Gen. 5&11 implies a Young Earth

5)  Are Behemoth and Leviathan dinos or large reptiles?

6)  What does Mk 10:6 imply about a Young Earth?

The Wayfinding Bible (NLT, Tyndale) has a version of AiG’s ark similar to this,

However, the comments are fuzzy as to whether the Global Flood had significant geologic effect.  If your Bible has a map of Eden, that is an error – Noah’s Flood wiped out the pre-Flood geography.  Does your study Bible skip Exodus 20:11, which clearly teaches Creation in Six Days (CISD)?  In Job 40 & 41, Behemoth is surely a dino and Leviathan was most likely a large water-dwelling reptile (such as a mosasaur).

Ken Mathews in the Apologetics Study Bible (p. 15) says, “… this genealogy [Ge 5&11] cannot be used to the reconstruct the age of the earth.”  The chronology of Genesis does help us validate the Young Earth view.  Ted Cabal (p. 877) states that the “… old-earth interpretations arose due to the … discovery of enormous numbers of extinct animals such as dinosaurs.”  This is a non sequitur – fossils point to the Flood.  Terry Mortenson has shown in The Great Turning Point that Old Earth Fallacies (OEF) are founded on the work of Deist and atheist scholars using anti-biblical PreSuppositions.   

The New Geneva Study Bible has a chart of the ages of the patriarchs from Adam to Joseph (p. 17).  This would seem to favor the Young Earth interpretation, but the OT editor is Bruce Waltke who supports BioLogos.  The Framework Hypothesis is given consideration (p. 7).  The commentary on Ge 6:17 says, “A worldwide flood seems to be in view …” (p. 20).  R.C. Sproul now endorses The Reformation Study Bible.

Near the front of the NIV Study Bible there is a Chronological Chart:

The world is roughly about six millennia old – we don’t need a bunch of question marks.  Arguments for both a local and Global Flood are given (p. 15).  Behemoth is a hippo or elephant and Leviathan is a crocodile (p. 769).

Terry Mortenson describes Bible commentaries and systematic theologies that support the Young Earth perspective. [1]

After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing.  The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed (Dan. 9:26, NIV).

Note:

1) Coming to Grips with Genesis ed. by Terry Mortenson and Thane Ury (Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2008), pp. 327-329.

James Hutton and the Lost Preface

              *** UPDATE ***

Be sure to catch our latest video.  We tackle a potpourri of topics:  Thunder & C-14, Tree Rings & Ammonites,  Norman Macbeth (Darwin Retried), OMNI magazine & censorship ... #Rubio #NormanMacbeth #Darwin #AltMed #TreeRings

James Hutton, the Father of Deep Time, wrote a preface to his Theory of the Earth (1788 and 1795) that was not published until 1975!  Although Hutton was a Deist and rejected Genesis, he held that man has been on this planet for only thousands of years‼ [1]   So, in one sense, Hutton supported Young Earth Science (YES). 

Hutton’s title for the preface is “Memorial justifying the present Theory of the Earth from the suspicion of impiety.”  Hutton understood that his innovations contradict Moses.

Hutton begins his preface as follows:

It belongs to religion to teach, that God made all things with creative power; that perfect wisdom had then presided in the election of ends & means, and that nothing is done without the most benevolent intention. But it belongs not to religion to give a history of nature, or to inform mankind of those things which actually are; it belongs not to religion, to teach that natural order of events, which man, in his science, may be able to unfold, and, in the wise system of intellect, find means to ascertain. The object of revelation and that of natural philosophy being thus perfectly different, it must be absurd to suppose that these can truly interfere; as this may only happen in supposing them not strictly adhering to their respective subjects and one or other of them as not being just. [2]

Notice how this is similar to Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA position (Nonoverlapping Magisteria).

Hutton shows genuine candor in his preface:

… which of those two contradictory doctrines [“science v. religion”] should be of the highest authority, or command belief: the one is supposed to be divine revelation, the other to be the produce of natural philosophy. Such a question will not appear strange to a person who is truly pious, who acknowledges that all faculties are given him from above, that the laws of nature are true & steady as their author, and that man, made after the image of God, has been ordained to read the wisdom of his author in his works.

lt may perhaps he alledged, that as, from the fallibility of human reasoning, a physical disquisition may he erroneous, revelation, proceeding from a source which cannot err, should not only be reverenced as sacred, but must be received without dispute, and stand unaffected by every authority which is precarious.… it is not here meant either to impeach the authenticity of revelation, or to defend the fallibility of philosophic reasoning; these two things, as sources of human information, can only be compared properly when each, in its kind, is considered as perfect. [3]

Science is “perfect?”  Hutton capitalizes God, but not Author (hmm …). Science is based on fallible human reasoning.

Hutton gives this shocking admission:

It must be evident that if there be in the author of nature truth and in the author of men benevolence, the word of God, whether revealed by the common faculties of man, or given to human understanding in a preternatural [outside of nature] manner, must be always one.  Consequently it were impious to suppose that either one or other of those two different means of information had superior authority or that the proper result of each had not an equal right to be believed. [4]

Is Mother Nature the 67^th book of the Bible??  Where have I heard that before?

Hutton goes on,

The christian religion is founded upon what is contained in the ancient Jewish writings; and in those writings we find something which seems to have the appearance of natural history. But that this is not truly so, or, at least, that such a part of natural history has no concern whatever with the present theory of the earth, will appear from the following considerations. The mosaic history of the creation, in giving a most succinct account of the order in which things were made, contains no chronological description of the beginning of things, or such as might apply to our measure of time, which is by days & years. This will appear by considering, that the sun, by which we measure our time, was not formed until the fourth distinguished period of the creation; and that it would be unreasonable, or no less than absurd, to suppose the term Day, by which each of those periods is expressed, in this Jewish history, means any thing besides an indefinite period, or means any more than to signify that God made all things in a certain order. [5]

Hutton does not capitalize Christian or Mosaic.  Genesis clearly does give a natural history.  About sixteen centuries after Creation Week this globe was destroyed by a worldwide catastrophe (Gen. 9:11).  The Genesis days are real days (Ex. 20:11).

Hutton claimed that his theory, “… does not in any respect interfere with chronology of the Old Testament.” [6]  Genesis chapters 5 and 11 provide an accurate chronology that validates Young Earth Science (YES).

The Great Lisbon Earthquake (1755) occurred in Hutton’s time.  The earthquake and the associated tsunami almost destroyed Lisbon and the surrounding regions.  Seismologists estimate a magnitude 8.5 to 9 for this quake.  Despite such events, Hutton veered away from catastrophism.  Catastrophism is now in a Renaissance.  Writing in Megaflooding on Earth and Mars (Cambridge Univ. Press), Victor Baker states,

After centuries of geological controversy it is now well established that the last major deglaciation of planet Earth involved huge fluxes of water from the wasting continental ice sheets, and that much of this water was delivered as floods of immense magnitude and relatively short duration. [7]

Hutton held to fixity of kinds.  This biological stasis leads one to hold to a worldwide cataclysm. [3]   Biological essentialism => Catastrophism => Young Earth Science (YES).

“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (Jn. 3:12).

Graphics credit:  Francis Schaeffer Hall.

Notes:

1) “James Hutton on Religion and Geology:  the Unpublished Preface to his Theory of the Earth (1788)” by Dennis Dean, Annals of Science 32 (1975): 187-193, p. 191.
2) Ibid., p. 189.
3) Ibid.
4) Ibid., p. 190.
5) Ibid.
6) Ibid.
7) Megaflooding on Earth and Mars ed. by Devon Burr, Paul Carling and Victor Baker (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009), p. 1
8) “Huttonian Biology and Geologic Upheaval” by Jay Hall, Creation Research Society Quarterly (1984), 21:76-78.

What Does the Finch Say?

Dog goes woof, Dino goes RAWR!
Bird goes tweet, platypus is meek.
Cow goes moo. Ape goes eek and Kinds are kind.
Ducks say quack and fish don’t really have legs.
But there's one sound that so few know …
WHAT DOES THE FINCH SAY?

Ga-Ga-Ga-Galapagos   

Ga-Ga-Ga-Galapagos   
WHAT THE FINCH SAY?

Dar-Dar-Dar-Dar-Dar-Win?

Dar-Dar-Dar-Dar-Dar-LOST!
WHAT THE FINCH SAY?

Large Ground, Small Tree, Warbler Woe

Large Ground, Small Tree, Warbler Woe
WHAT THE FINCH SAY?

Big black eyes, pointy beak, eat cactus and love insects.

Finches live, reproduce, all their kids are finches still.
Finches now; finches then, the finch kind is no disguise.

The secret of the finch, ancient mystery.

Somewhere deep in time, Darwin’s Doubt is hiding.
When finches come to town, we can surely know.
Day Five saw finches first – it’s no mystery.

What does the finch say?

Then God said, "Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens."  So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.  And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."  So the evening and the morning were the fifth day [Day Five] (Gen. 1:20-23).

Killing Jesus

Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard have written Killing Jesus and state,

… we have the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but they sometimes appear contradictory and were written from a spiritual point of view rather than as a historical chronicling of Jesus's [sic] life. [1]

They should get a copy of Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason Archer which deals with these tensional verses.  Doctor Luke clearly states that he is using historical research methods (Lk 1:1-4).  Has O’Reilly actually read the Bible (all 66 books)?

O’Reilly’s spin is “We do not address Jesus as the Messiah” [2]  Did he take the same approach in Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy?  Was Lincoln merely a prominent leader during a Civil War?  NO, he was President.  Was JFK just a national figure loved by many celebs?  NO, he “kept the world from ending” (Cuban missile crisis).  Jesus Being the Christ cannot be overlooked!  The Jewish Historian Josephus recorded the following:

[Jesus’ disciples] reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders. [3]

This version comes from a tenth century Arabic text and so is unlikely to have been corrupted by Christian influence.  Christ’s miracles and perfect life point to his deity:

Jesus of Nazareth was a man proved to you by God himself through the works of power, the miracles and the signs which God showed through him here amongst you - as you very well know. … Now therefore the whole nation of Israel must know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this Jesus, whom you crucified, God has declared to be both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:22, 36, Philips).

O’Reilly claims to be Roman Catholic (RC), but he denies the reality of Adam and Eve and ridicules Noah’s Large Barge (Ark).  The Kolbe Center in an RC resource that supports traditional creation.  Dr. Joseph Strada (Ph.D.  Aeronautical Engineering and Mathematics) is one of their speakers.

O’Reilly refers to Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances as “apparitions.” [4]  What’s up with that?

Even the cover of Killing Jesus is wrong.  Mel Gibson (friend of Robert Downey Jr.) got it right.  The sign on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” was in Hebrew, Greek and Latin (Jn 19:20).

On a more positive note, O’Reilly’s references on the “Historical Jesus” include the work of J.P. Moreland, Darrell Bock, William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, Mike Licona and C.S. Lewis. [5]

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Notes:

1) Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard , p. 1.
2) Ibid., p. 2.
3) quoted in Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler (Baker, Grand Rapids, MI, 1999), p. 254.
4) O'Reilly and Dugard, p. 261.
5) Ibid., p. 279.