JD Greear, Christianity Today & the Six Day Apocalypse

J.D. Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church in North Carolina and the President of the SBC.  He was recently on an Ask Me Anything (AMA) podcast hosted by Matt Love.  Unfortunately, Greear waffles on the First Six Days:

I know godly, biblically faithful theologians who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and who think that the timetable of Genesis 1 was not a literal week (which, by the way, isn’t a new interpretation, but is a position that has been around since the first few centuries of Christianity).

He mentions Augustine in the podcast.  Augustine actually held to a young earth.  In general, the Early Church Fathers held to creation in six days and a young earth. [1]

Thankfully, Greear opposes theistic evolution (Theo-Evo).  One wonders if he has read Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique by Moreland and Meyer et al.  One chapter by Christopher Shaw is on "Pressure to Conform Leads to Bias in Science."  I think many preachers are influenced by the culture more that Scripture.

The Summit Church has this on their "Beliefs" page:

We believe the Bible to be God’s Word, a true and fully accurate account of God’s love for us. Its purpose is to teach us how to have a relationship with him, worship him, and bring him glory.Psalm 19:7-10; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:19-21

Is it not loving that the Lord gives us a day of rest?

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Ex. 20:11, cf. Ex. 31:16,17).

Both Muslims and Jews agree that the earth is younger than mainstream science claims.  The traditional Jewish calendar states that Creation Week was 5780 years ago. [2]  Maybe Greear should read Is a Young Earth Possible? to get the deep info that favors a youthful planet.  

Where does the apocalypse come in?  That's the slippery slope - once church leaders compromise on Genesis, this often leads to other errors.  Harold Lindsell was at one time the editor of Christianity Today and died in Laguna Hills in 1998 (I've been there).  His book The Battle for The Bible exposed the trend towards theological liberalism.  Lindsell took a very strong stand for the Historical Adam.   

Who's the editor of Christianity Today now?  Daniel Harrell is, former senior minister at Colonial Church (MN) and before that the pastor of the famous Park Street Church in Boston.  Here's Harrell's conclusion on the creation/evolution controversy:

The Bible says six days, but there's no way that's right unless astrophysics and geology are patently false.  ...The scientific evidence is too strong in evolution's favor to reasonably deny its occurrence.  You can refuse to believe it, but that still won't make it untrue any more than denying God exists proves that he does not exist.

Harrell even wrote a book supporting Darwin - Nature's Witness: How Evolution Can Inspire Faith (2008).  Yet, in a talk in 1992 at Park Street Church, he admitted that evolution can't be proven and went further to say that Darwinism is not strictly science since it can't be disproven either.  Did Harrell's position on origins evolve?  He even mentioned Phillip Johnson, the father of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement in a positive light.  Johnson seems to lean towards the young earth view and has visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky.  Has Harrell done the same?

Now let's look at the theological connection.  Park Street Church has a very streamlined "Statement of Faith" including points on the Father, the Son and the Spirit, the authority of the Scriptures, salvation by grace through faith etc.  In contrast, Colonial Church has "Five Core Values" where we find this ...          

Immerse in Sacred Spaces & Rhythms: There are places, traditions and particular practices of faith and worship wherein we tangibly encounter the holy and living God.  Regular immersion in such places and practices forms and reforms us in line with the good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2).  In these transcendent places and moments, we experience realties larger than ourselves and realize the fullness faith in Christ makes possible.

Jesus surely favored a youthful world ... shouldn't that end the argument (Mk. 10:6, Mk. 13:19, Lk. 11:50,51)?  Please check out TotalYouth.us for more powerful young earth evidence. 

   >>  for Total truth, support earth's Youth  <<

Notes:

1) Coming to Grips with Genesis ed. by Terry Mortenson and Thane Ury (Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2008), pp. 23-51.

2) Is a Young Earth Possible? by Jay Hall (Institute for Catastrophism and Tectonics - iCAT, Big Spring, TX, 2019), p. 339.

Bill Nye Choked on Radiometric Dating Question

Comedian, actor and former mechanical engineer William Sanford Nye (b. 1955) is best known for the show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–98).  Nye gave a very poor response to the question regarding radiometric dating in the recent debate with Ken Ham (see the 2 hour and 7 minute mark).

First, he side-stepped the issue and brought up old stars.  That’s right, he was dancing with the stars!  Russell Humphreys (Ph.D. Physics, formerly with Sandia National Labs) wrote Starlight and Time in 1994 and gave a plausible answer to this question based on the General Theory of Relativity and gravitational time dilation.  A reasonable man or woman can see that the light travel problem applies to both the Big Bang and Creation models (as Ken pointed out regarding the horizon problem).

Nye defended an old earth based on depositional rates.  In 1883, Alexander Winchell, former State Geologist of Michigan, estimated the age of the earth at 3M years. [1]  That’s a far cry from 4.5 billion years.  That was back when gradualistic uniformitarianism was in vogue.  But now catastrophism has a wide following even within mainstream Geology.  So, if most deposits were formed rapidly, such as turbidites, the depositional rates favor Young Earth Science (YES).

Nye said Charles Lyell (d. 1875) came up with the phrase “deep time.”  Actually, it was John McPhee who wrote Basin and Range in 1980.  McPhee said, “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time” (p. 133). 

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (d. 1934) came up with the term “radioactivity.”  Nye made the very common mistake in stating that radioactivity contradicted Kelvin’s age for the Earth (his final estimate was 24M).  In 1895, before the discovery of radioactivity, John Perry showed that convection in the Earth's interior modified Kelvin’s age of the Earth.

Some claim that YES is pseudoscience.  Bill Nye the Science Guy had an episode on that topic.  Nye said there must be aliens because there are so many stars.  Yet no one has seen aliens and there are no cities on Mars.  Extraordinary claims (aliens) require extraordinary evidence.  Nye was skeptical of the Loch Ness Monster.  According to the Smithsonian’s online encyclopedia, “Even though most scientists believe the likelihood of a monster is small, they keep an open mind …”  Perhaps Nye should be open minded towards YES.  An article in National Geographic was very fair towards Nessie and included reports from very reliable witnesses. [2]

A number of times in the debate ice core dating was brought up.  We have a post on ice cores.

Nye should read Kicking the Sacred Cow by former aeronautical engineer and award winning SciFi author James Hogan.  Hogan is very sympathetic to YES.  Ken Ham sent Nye a book in The New Answers Book series – will Nye have an open mind and read it and seriously consider the evidence?

As for the question posed to Nye in the debate, Ephraim Fischbach (Purdue University) gave a talk at the Institute for Theoretical, Atomic and Molecular and Optical Physics (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) providing firm data that indicates that the sun affects radioactive decay rates.  John Woodmorappe (M.A. Geology) has written an excellent book refuting radiometric dating and millions of years.  Jay Wile (Ph.D. Nuclear Chemistry, Univ. of Rochester), at one time a skeptic regarding accelerated radioactive decay, has some great info on varying decay rates.

Soft tissue in dinos, as discovered by Mary Schweitzer and others, says that dinos are young and the dating methods are wrong.  As Tim Stafford (The Adam Quest) asks, “How could something as delicate as blood cells survive sixty million [sic] years?” [3]

Pray for Bill.  The Apostle Paul persecuted the church.  Bill is persecuting YES.  Paul was gloriously converted (Acts 9, 22, 26).  The same thing can happen to Bill!  Will Bill Nye the Science Guy be blinded by the light (Acts 22:11)?

Nye is the head of the Planetary Society.  Feel free to send him a letter of encouragement or some creation books (such as the New Answers Books):

Attn. Bill Nye

The Planetary Society

85 South Grand Ave

Pasadena  CA  91105

Notes:

1) "Celebrating the age of the Earth" by Simon Knell and Cherry Lewis, Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2001, vol. 190, p. 1-14, p. 7.

2) “Loch Ness: the lake and the legend” by William Ellis, National Geographic, Vol. 151, No. 6, June 1977, p. 759.

3) The Adam Quest by Tim Stafford (Nelson Books, Nashville, TN, 2013), p. 105.