#16 UNDERSTANDING THE BIG BANG AND GENESIS + Dr. Hugh Ross

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Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host.

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In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding

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God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

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Now, I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the

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Bible make sense, so we can get to know God, our creator, better. My name is

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Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host today for Biblically Speaking. Big thank you to anyone listening in.

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This podcast is amazing. This is one of these things for me that have become my passion and my purpose.

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So if you're listening in, I'm glad that you're involved, but this walk with God has just been amazing. I'm not going to lie.

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I'm riding a bit of a high right now because I just finished recording with Dr. Hugh Ross, today's guest.

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And if you know anything about Dr. Hugh Ross, that's a big deal, but don't worry if you don't, you're about to learn so much.

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Think of sitting down with the smartest person you ever met and just not talking, and them just spouting absolute wisdom and truth that just puts your jaw on the floor.

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That's what just happened to me for the last hour. And then of course, after we hung up, he continued to talk to me because he's amazing.

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His wife is amazing. I met him because I found him online, and then

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I found out he was nearby at a church, and then I went up to him and he agreed to come on here. It truly was me expecting a no and getting a fervent yes.

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And he just is so smart, just so smart. And it's so refreshing to just get that wisdom shared with you when you're so hungering for it.

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So we'll get into that in a sec. But if you are new to biblically speaking, welcome.

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This is essentially a podcast where I am a curious and confused Christian that wants to know and love the

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Lord, but wasn't finding the information that got me there when I was going to Bible studies or church.

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And so in a search for understanding this God that people were on fire for, I just decided a while ago and then just took action not too long ago to actually find

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PhDs and ask them questions. And that's what we do here. And right when I said yes, God opened the doors to me meeting with PhDs that I did not have access to before I said yes.

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And since then, we've been asking questions that had me confused, had me perplexed.

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And it's amazing because every conversation really builds on the next one. So what we're doing here is learning more about the

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Bible, answering questions, and through that knowing a God that we can now love deeper and know more about how much he loves us.

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So today's topic focuses on Big Bang, focuses on Genesis, focuses on creation.

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And I'm sure that's the first question you might be thinking if you're potentially becoming a Christian or talking to atheists, you know, explain

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Big Bang. I don't know. I feel like that's what I would get. That's what my friends want to know is explain evolution, explain

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Big Bang. You know, how is there a creator that made the world in seven days when we have scientific proof of evolution and fossils?

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Does it make sense? Well, surprise, surprise, Dr. Hugh Ross makes it make sense.

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And the answers are so clear, so understandable, so reasonable and logical.

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So it's a great conversation. It's one of those podcasts that I think you should probably lead with.

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I wish this was our first episode of this podcast, but we got here, you know, share this episode with whoever, share it with your friends.

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It's a safe episode to open the door to conversation of saying, Hey, this is what an astrophysicist thinks about this topic.

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And he's biblical. So he makes sense between the biblical and the scientific. What do you think? Boom, evangelism.

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No, I mean, this is something you share with your friends, your family, kids that are just now learning about science in fourth grade, whatever it might be.

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It's a little high level. I mean, he definitely said some things where I was like, I gotta take some notes and research that one later.

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But all in all, I, uh, it was just honestly in shock. I don't even know what to say.

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So I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I did. God is so good. God is so clearly trying to let us know him and love him better.

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And, um, I'm just glad you guys are just as curious and confused as me and willing to learn and ask questions.

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And thank you to everyone that submitted questions on Instagram. Um, I tried to fit in as many as I could. Um, and other than that, follow along for more guests.

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We have, uh, another guest coming this week. That's discussing the same topic, uh, as Dr.

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Ross today. And then we have a couple more, um, people coming on from other podcasts.

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We've got some really exciting stuff lined up and I'm so excited to learn and share that learning with you.

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So thanks so much for listening and let's jump into it. Hey, hello.

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Hello. Welcome everybody. Listening to biblically speaking. I'm your host, Cassie Belino. And today

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I am absolutely honored to have on the show. Hugh Ross, Dr. Hugh Ross to many, uh,

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Hugh to me as of recently, but, uh, Hugh is an astrophysicist. He's an author and he is the founder of reasons to believe, which is an organization that researches and communicates, uh, discoveries between human nature and the words of the

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Bible. And I actually found you on Instagram right when I started this podcast.

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And right away, I was like, that is exactly the type of guests that I want to have on this show. I searched you down and then

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I found you in Kauai and you were so lovely to meet Hugh right away. I sat down and I had a big speech planned about why you should come on my podcast.

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And right away you said, yeah, I'll go on your podcast. So thank you for making this easy and welcome to the show.

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Well, my pleasure. I'm so glad that you're here. How are you today? Doing well. Thank you. Awesome.

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Well, today we're going to be talking about Genesis and I'd love to give you an opportunity to talk about how an astrophysicist found his way into studying the

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Bible and being an expert on Genesis and kind of the topic today. What's your story?

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Well, it's actually part of my conversion. I mean, I got into astronomy when I was seven years of age.

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I was reading four or five books on astronomy and physics every week. I knew from age of eight onward that I would be an astrophysicist.

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So I began to earnestly pursue that path. And part of my growing up was every year

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I would study a different subdiscipline of astronomy. One year I looked at stellar atmospheres, another year at galaxy formation, another year at interiors of stars.

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When I was 16, I spent that year studying cosmology, the science of the origin and history of the universe.

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And at that time there was a major debate. Do we live in a steady state universe, a reincarnating universe like the

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Hindus teach, a Big Bang universe, a hesitating universe? But I realized that the observations were heavily favoring, even at that time, the

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Big Bang. And if it's Big Bang, that means the universe has a beginning. It's not eternal.

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And as a beginning, there must be a cosmic beginner. So as at age 17,

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I said, I want to find that cosmic beginner. Now, I was raised and educated in Canada.

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There weren't any Christians in our neighborhood. I didn't really know where to look. So I said, well,

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I guess I'll start with the great philosophers. And I know one that wrote a lot about cosmology was

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Immanuel Kant. So I read his critique of pure reason. And I said, you know, things aren't quite fitting.

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There was a lot of inconsistencies in what he wrote, especially about space and time. So I looked at René Descartes' writings and said, hey, there's things here that are not quite right either.

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And the high school I went to in Vancouver was filled with refugees from all over the world.

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And they encouraged me to look at the Buddhist commentaries, the

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Hindu Vedas, the Quran, and Zoroastrian writings. So I began to go through those holy books and realized that every one of them had incorrect concepts of the universe.

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And I felt that the beginner would certainly communicate the truth about the universe. So that led me to the conclusion.

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These books, in spite of how many people believe that they're inspired by the one that created the universe,

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I said they have to be inventions of human beings. And I was impressed, for example.

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Just a quick question. What were some of the incorrect inconsistencies that maybe people are believing right now that you kind of realized aren't correct?

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One of the dominant models that was competing with the Big Bang at that time was the oscillating universe model, the idea that the universe goes through cycles of beginnings and endings.

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And when I read the Hindu Vedas, I said, oh, this is where it comes from, because the heart and core of Hinduism is that the universe reincarnates.

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In fact, everything reincarnates. And the Hindu Vedas said the time period between one beginning and the next beginning is exactly 4 .32

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billion years. Now it's in the right ballpark, but it's not the right number. And I also realized at age 17, the universe has an entropy measure 100 million times too high to permit any restart of the universe.

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So I put Hinduism aside and said this can't be the one from the beginner.

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So just for the people that aren't as smart as you, myself included, what do you mean by the entropy level of the earth was too high compared to what the

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Hindus were saying? Well, entropy refers to how rapidly the universe is decaying and is decaying very rapidly and very efficiently.

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And the rate at which it's decaying eliminates the possibility that there could be a mechanical mechanism that would rebound the universe from a death to a rebirth.

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And it's literally 100 million times too high. So I said, okay, that rules out

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Hinduism. I looked at the Buddhist commentaries and I noticed that they taught the same cosmological model.

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So I put Buddhism aside. I looked at the Quran and it had three different texts on creation, but they weren't consistent.

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And one contradicted the other two. And that one basically told us that the planets were more distant from us than the stars.

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And you don't need a telescope to know that that's incorrect. We can measure parallax with planets.

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We can't with the stars with the naked eye. So then I looked at Zoroastrianism.

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I spent some time looking at Mormonism, looked at a few other isms. And when

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I tell people I didn't get to know any Christians until I showed up at Caltech to do postdoctoral research, that was to get to actually have a serious communication with a

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Christian. I did see two Christians from 30 feet away when I was 11 years of age.

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And these were two businessmen that came into our public school and they had

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Bibles. They were Gideons and they were giving away Gideon Bibles. And you know, we were all poor.

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So it's like somebody giving away a free book, we're going to grab it. Everybody in my class took home a

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Gideon Bible. I actually have my Gideon Bible here that was given to me when

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I was 11 years of age. I keep it in a bag because it's actually in a state of decay.

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But this is the Gideon Bible that I began to read when I was 17 years of age.

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Yeah, the cover's gone because our dog chewed the cover off. And my sons were young at the time.

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And one of them said, our dog must be from the pit of hell because he's destroying the Word of God.

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My other son was a little more sanguine. He says, no, our dog is feeding on the Word of God. But I began to read that Gideon Bible and right away realized this book is radically different from the other books.

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And it began with Genesis 1. And I'd been steeped in the scientific method from grade one.

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That was something about the Canadian public education that I got. We were taught the scientific method in all 12 grades.

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And so when I looked at Genesis 1, the scientific method jumped off the page. I mean, step one, do not interpret until you establish the frame of reference.

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And so I noticed Genesis 1 -2 explicitly states that the

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Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the waters of planet Earth. So I said, okay, that's the point of view to interpret the six days.

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Step two of the scientific method, don't interpret until you first establish the starting conditions.

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And Genesis 1 -2 gives you four initial conditions. It's dark on the surface of the waters, the water covers the whole surface of the

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Earth, and the world is formless and void. It's empty of life and unfit for life, but now the spark.

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And so I went through the six days of creation, realized everything is correctly stated with respect to the established scientific record, and everything is in a correct chronological order.

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Now, the best I'd found outside of the Bible was the creation text you see in the ancient

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Babylonian Enuma Elish. It gets two out of 14 right.

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You say, what about all the other creation texts in the ancient world? They all score zero. The Enuma Elish got two out of 14 right.

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And I think my understanding for that is it was the closest to the biblical culture.

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So it got two out of 14 right, but only the Bible got a perfect score. And so seeing that at age 17,

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I said, I'm going to give this book a serious read. And I was also encouraged as I began to go through the

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Bible, saying, wow, there's over two dozen major texts on creation, because that's one of the steps of the scientific method.

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After you go through the sequence of events, you note the final conditions, you hold to an initial interpretation, and you test that interpretation with other experiments, observations, or in this case, texts.

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And so I began to say, hey, not only does Genesis 1 take you through the history of creation,

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Job does. Psalms does a multiple creation Psalms, and also

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Proverbs 8. So I began to go through those texts. I noticed especially the book of Job actually gives more details than you find in the book of Genesis.

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So I wound up spending 18 months studying the Bible one or two hours a night.

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I knew my family wouldn't approve. So after I was doing all my physics problems as an undergraduate, from midnight to two in the morning,

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I would be secretly studying the Bible. So and it took me 18 months to get to Revelation 22, because I was testing everything

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I could find, all the geography, all the science, all the history, and realized

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I'd not been able to find a single provable error or contradiction, and wound up finding over 100 places where the

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Bible accurately predicted future scientific discoveries, and over 200 places where it accurately predicted future historical events.

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And so I, back at age 19, I actually calculated the probability that the

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Bible could have had that prophetic power without being inspired by the one who created the universe, and determined that that probability was much more remote than one chance in 10.

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The assignment was to make the point, if you can prove that something is more remotely probable than one chance in 10 of the 50th, it's impossible.

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It'll never happen, anytime, anywhere in the universe. But I just demonstrated that the

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Bible was 10 to the 480 times more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics.

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And I realized, hey, I trust my life every second to the reliability of the second law.

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It would simply be irrational for me to put not even greater trust in the reliability of this book, the

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Bible. And I need to give credit to the Gideons, because at least the

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Gideon Bible they gave me had two pages in the back that basically explained, once you become convinced this is the inspired, inerrant word from the one that created the universe, this is what you need to do to develop a relationship with that creator.

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You know, and explain the fact that God had written this law on the heart of every human being, and that law basically tells us that God's standard is one of moral perfection.

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And our conscience reacts whenever we fall short of that perfect standard, which basically tells us we're not passing

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God's standard. But, you know, just looking at the universe and the earth and life, we realize

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God is so powerful, so intelligent, knowledgeable, wise, and caring, and loving, is that he would do for us what we can't do for ourselves if we simply ask him.

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And I said, well, and then the Gideons talk about how the creator came here as a human being, humbled himself, and lived amongst us, and demonstrated his moral perfection.

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And I remembered, hey, I remember reading in the gospels where Jesus was in front of a large crowd, and he was being opposed by religious leaders that were against his ministry, who were accusing him of being a sinner.

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And he said, well, can any of you accuse me of any moral failing? And they were quiet.

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They could not name a single moral failure, nor could his mother who was in the audience, or his four brothers, or his sisters.

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And it's like, you know, maybe you can fool someone that doesn't know you well, but your mother and your brothers, the fact that they all agreed he was morally perfect, said he really is the one he claims to be.

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And then how in his sacrifice on the cross, he offered to trade his moral perfection for a moral imperfection.

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And I said, that's a deal I can't turn down. But I also appreciated that Gideon said,

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Jesus knows better than any one of us what's best for our life. You need to put him in charge of your life, because he knows better than you do how to run your life.

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I said, yeah, that makes sense. And the Gideons don't let you off the hook. They got a place for you to sign your name and date it, committing your life to trade your moral imperfection for God's moral imperfection, and to make him the master of your life, as well as your savior.

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So it was at 5 in the morning, on an August 6 night, that I signed my name on the back of the

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Gideon Bible, committing my life to Jesus Christ. You have the date memorized.

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Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I put the date in, I put the time in. So yeah,

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I got a record of that. How did your family react the next morning when you came to breakfast and said, guys, look what

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I did last night? Well, I didn't tell them initially, because I knew that I wasn't really prepared for their reaction.

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On the other hand, having spent 18 months with that in -depth study, I knew that giving your life to Jesus Christ was a commitment to make

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Jesus number one in your life, and also to share with others what has happened.

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And so I recognized that I was now responsible to go public. But for some reason,

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I didn't publicly reveal my Christianity first to my parents or my sisters. I said my lab partner, and he was one that challenged me every time.

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And one reason why we did so well in our labs, I would come up with an idea of how to proceed with the experiment, and he would challenge me and say,

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Hugh, you got to prove it before we're going to do this. And that's just his personality. He was just, prove it.

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So I figured that's probably the first person I would try to share my faith with. And so there was one afternoon where we had both finished our physics problems faster than we thought, and all of our classes were done for the day.

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And so we were sitting in this empty physics auditorium, and he looked at me and said,

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Hugh, I can tell you want to talk to me about something, but I need to talk first. He says,

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I've been going through struggles in my life I've told nobody about. I need to talk to somebody about God.

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Do you know anybody in this campus who knows anything about God? No way.

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So we had a three -hour conversation that afternoon. I told him what had been happening in my life.

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And true to form, John Sampson said, hey, you're claiming the Bible predicts future historical events.

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I want you to prove that. I said, okay, let's go to the library on the campus.

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Let's dig up some microfiche about newspapers published in the 1940s and 1950s, and let's see how well it squares with the book of Ezekiel, because the book of Ezekiel, that predicted in detail what would happen to the second rebirth of the nation of Israel.

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So here we were in the library from midnight to two in the morning, going through microfilms of the

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Jerusalem Post, the London Times, the San Francisco Chronicler, and I remember

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John just slapping his head and saying, I can't believe this. What you see in Ezekiel 36 and 37 actually has happened right on our own lifetime.

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He says, look at these newspaper headlines. That's exactly what you see in the Bible. And so we had many conversations that followed that, and he went on to become the chairman of the physics department at the

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University of Alberta. And he was on our reasons to believe mailing list, so keep me on the mailing list.

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I enjoy reading the articles. He never told me whether or not he had become a Christian, but I kept running into his students, and they all told me, those who were

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Christians, that John encouraged their Christianity and encouraged them to integrate their science with their

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Christian faith. But I do know, hey, that taught me a lesson. I thought it was my responsibility to basically force conversations and realize, hey,

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God's in the business of bringing people together and opening the doors. You just have to be ready.

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And so, just like what you see in the Book of Acts, just how God brought Peter and Cornelius together.

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And I actually wound up writing a book. It's on the bookshelf back here, Always Be Ready, where I document over a hundred stories, just like what you see in the

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Book of Acts, between Cornelius and Peter, where God supernaturally brings a

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Christian together with a non -Christian that's prepared to hear and respond. And the first four or five times it happens, you think it's a sheer coincidence, but when it happens over a hundred times, you realize, no, the

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Holy Spirit is doing the same things today that he did in the Book of Acts. Same kinds of miracles are happening.

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And, you know, I also serve as a pastor in a church between Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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And so, I just share with people there, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, put into practice 1

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Peter 3 .15. Be prepared to give good reasons for your faith and hope in Jesus Christ.

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Do so with gentleness and respect, and you'll see God doing outstanding miracles to help you share your faith.

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And by the way, when you experience those miracles, it's going to really strengthen your faith.

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And what I noticed as a pastor, people who have those miracles happening in their life, their faith dramatically grows stronger.

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And those people that don't, it's kind of like what happened to the children of Israel. They forgot the miracles of the decades ago, and they began to falter in maintaining their faith in God.

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I think we all need those kinds of direct personal experiences. Wow. I have so many questions,

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Hugh. Go for it. Well, I am curious. I mean, I have a lot of questions, but just to respond to something you said in Ezekiel predicting events in the 40s, what were you specifically?

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Well, before I became a Christian, what struck me in looking at Ezekiel 37 is this picture of valleys filled with dry bones.

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And God tells Ezekiel, those are the bones of your people. And when the unbelieving

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Gentile nations see those bones, they'll say, the

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Jews as a people and a nation are finished. It'll never happen. But he says, when they make those statements, that's the day the nation will be reborn.

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So I remember before I had that encounter with John Sampson, I actually went and looked up those old newspapers.

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And what did I see? I saw photos on the front pages of papers showing these huge valleys filled with thousands and thousands of skeletons of Jews that were slaughtered in the

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Holocaust. And before World War II, there was a Zionist movement.

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Zionism was a movement to found the nation of Israel. But what you saw in the headlines in 46 and 47,

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Zionism is finished. The core of Zionism was Poland and said,

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Poland lost four and a half million Jews. There will be no nation of Israel. Zionism cannot survive the

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Holocaust. And yet May 15th, 1948, we got the rebirth of Israel.

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And what's interesting is that the book of Isaiah predicted that the name of the nation would be

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Israel. And what was interesting in the days before the founding of Israel, there was a debate going on in the emerging

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Nesset, and people were basically pushing for the name Zion. We're going to call the nation

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Zion. At the last minute, David Ben -Gurion, the future prime minister of Israel, stood up and said, there will be no debate.

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We're calling it Israel. And David Ben -Gurion, as an atheist, had no idea this was in the

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Bible. Years later, people pointed out, are you aware that this was predicted? So, and yeah,

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I wound up spending about a month just going through the Old Testament and picking up all the predictions about the rebirth of this nation of Israel.

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When it was reborn, it would be attacked by 10 different people groups. It names the people groups, and they were the coalition that fought against Israel in the 48

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War. And what you also see in Ezekiel is that God would fight for this new nation, like he did during the

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Old Testament, but also made the prediction that the Jews would take credit for their victories.

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They would not give God any credit for the miracles he performed so the nation would survive.

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But he said, the unbelieving Gentile nations will give me credit, but you won't.

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And that all happened. So, and so, I wound up collecting all the passages that spoke about this.

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It's actually up on our reasons .org website. You know, modern

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Israel, a testament. I think Israel, a modern day miracle. And I just list the passages.

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I don't make any commentary. My goal is to get people to read those passages. And one that's interesting for the

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United States, it said that it would be gold and silver from people living in the distant coastlands that would finance the rebirth of the nation of Israel.

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And I remember reading the story as a teenager about Golda Meir was sent by David Ben -Gurion to go to Canada and United States and visit all the

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Jewish communities there because he says, we're being creamed by all these Arabic nations. They got powerful, well -funded armies.

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We don't have the money to buy the weapons that we need. And so, he sent David, he sent

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Golda Meir to New York with only $10 in her purse. But after a couple of months, she came back with $50 million.

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And it was David Ben -Gurion who said, if it wasn't for a woman, there'd be no nation of Israel.

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He basically gave Golda the credit for salvaging the nation because he says, with that 50 million, they were able to buy black market weapons, primarily in Czechoslovakia.

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And that turned the course of the 48 war from the Jews being thrown into the sea to actually overcoming their

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Arab invaders. Wow, that is...

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That was a factor of my coming to faith in Jesus Christ, just saying, hey, because I read about all these prophecies concerning the future

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Messiah, concerning what would happen to Israel, how Israel, the

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Jews would be scattered to all the nations of the world. I remember being impressed by the book of Daniel, how

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Daniel predicted that there would be four future world empires. But what hit me was

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Ezekiel saying, hey, this is what's going to happen. You know, that what you see in Deuteronomy is that there would be this powerful world empire in the

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West, a reference to the Roman Empire and how the Romans would come into Israel and take all the

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Jews as slaves and sell them in Egypt to all the nations of the world. And that was the beginning of the diaspora, where Jews were scattered to all the nations of the world.

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But what you see in the book of Ezekiel is that God would gather these scattered peoples and bring them back into the land of Israel.

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And there is one in, again, in the Psalms, where it talks about how those that were sentenced to death would be fighting the crucial battles that would get the nation of Israel going.

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And David Ben -Gurion records that it was 2 ,000 Jews who would escape

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Hitler's death camps that fought the crucial battle that opened up the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and took the heaviest losses.

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And they all had the numbers on their forearms from the death camps. But he said, without their bravery and opening up the corridor, we wouldn't have had a nation.

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We needed Jerusalem to be part of our country. So that was predicted 3 ,000 years ago.

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I think we could have a whole episode on the predictions that you found and what you think is going to happen in the future.

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But I do want to pick your brain a bit on how the world was created in seven days in the

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Big Bang, if you don't mind. Sure. Yeah, let's go there. So I think that's usually the first question that a lot of new

34:01

Christians or potentially new Christians want to ask is, how did this work? You know, if you're a very scientific person, you want to think of,

34:09

I think it's Einstein's law of how energy creates matter and matter returns back to energy.

34:14

Are you assuming that, you know, there's a creator of the Big Bang that created the universe, so God is the energy that created that matter?

34:24

Well, what's interesting is the Bible not only speaks about the beginning of the universe being a beginning of matter and energy, it speaks about it being a beginning of space and time itself.

34:37

I mean, you got Hebrews 11 .3, the universe that we can detect did not come from that which we can detect.

34:45

And we can detect matter, energy, space, and time. And, you know, when it talks about the beginning of the universe,

34:54

I mean, I was curious reading Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

35:01

And my first question is, what is this heavens and earth? And so I read through the whole of the

35:07

Old Testament looking for the word universe. You won't find it. I realized, oh,

35:12

I guess the ancient Hebrews didn't have a word for the universe. But 13 times you see this phrase repeated, the heavens and the earth.

35:21

And you look at all 13 instances in the Old Testament, it's clear it's referring to the totality of physical reality, all matter, energy, space, and time.

35:33

And then as I looked at both the Old Testament and the New Testament, there are frequent passages that talk about God's activities before the beginning of time.

35:44

So like you get 2 Timothy 9, the space of God that we now experience was put into effect before the beginning of time.

35:53

Or Titus 1 .2, the hope we share in Jesus Christ was given to us before the beginning of time.

36:01

So, and I was reading the Bible at the same time that physicists in Britain and South Africa were developing the first of the space -time theorems.

36:12

And theorems basically state, if the universe has mass, and a general relativity reliably describes the movements of bodies in the universe, then space and time at the beginning, space and time are created.

36:27

Now what I saw in the Eastern religions is that space and time were eternal, and God creates within space and time.

36:36

The Bible is different. It says space and time are not eternal. God created independent of space and time.

36:44

So that was my first clue, hey, we're talking a different God than the God we're recognizing.

36:50

So what would you say to maybe any listener that says like, oh, I think the universe for, you know, there is that, you know, unbelief sector that gives a lot of credit to the universe, because again, they think of the universe as very infinite, kind of like what you just said.

37:05

And would you say that's a very limiting belief that there's a God that is beyond that?

37:10

Well, that was 19th century cosmology, that the universe was infinitely old. And when

37:17

Newtonian mechanics says really, the only way you can have the universe stable in its dynamics, if it's infinitely old, and infinitely extensive.

37:26

But it was Einstein who basically said, no universe has a beginning. And then observation proved that he was right.

37:34

And so with general relativity, you can have a stable universe with a space time beginning.

37:41

So that was the difference between the 20th century and 19th century. 19th century physicists didn't know about general relativity.

37:50

But that kind of solved the problem. But also affirmed that the Bible got it right.

37:56

That when it says there was a beginning of space and time, science now proves that that is indeed correct.

38:06

That is incredible. So space and time has a beginning and an end, as stated in the

38:12

Bible. And the first chapter of the Bible talks about the creation of the world.

38:19

And it refers to it in days. And on the seventh day he was done, it's hard for me to imagine that it actually took seven human days.

38:30

How long do you think realistically in our human sense of this? Well, when I was reading

38:35

Genesis 1 for the first time as a 17 -year -old, I realized almost immediately these days must be consecutive long periods of time.

38:45

The first thing I picked up is that the word day in Genesis 1 and 2 must have at least three distinct literal definitions, because three are used in the text.

38:57

So on creation day 1, it uses the word day for the daylight hours. On creation day 4, it's contrasting seasons, days, and years.

39:07

So its day is 24 hours. But Genesis 2, 4 uses the same word day to refer to the entirety of creation history.

39:15

So its day has a significant passage of time. The other thing I noted is that the first six days all end with an evening -morning phrase.

39:27

Evening was, morning was, day 3, day 4, day 5, et cetera.

39:33

And I didn't know at age 17 what the Hebrew definitions for evening and morning were, but I knew at a minimum it was telling me each day has a definite start time and a definite end time.

39:47

And that told me that the days were consecutive, and so that the beginning of day 4 follows right after the end of day 3.

39:55

But then when I got to the seventh day, I noticed there was no evening -morning phrase.

40:01

It's missing in the text. And also the text says that God creates for six days and rests on the seventh day.

40:11

And when I read that, it answered an enigma that had bothered me since I was 11 years of age.

40:17

What happened at age 11, my parents were worried that I was getting obsessive about physics and astronomy, because that's all

40:25

I wanted to read. I didn't want to read anything else. And so they were trying to get me to read something other than that, and they knew it had to be science.

40:34

So they sacrificed to buy our family a big thick book on evolutionary biology, and I was the only one in the family that read through the book.

40:45

But I remember telling my parents, Mom, Dad, the numbers don't work. You've got all these families and orders and classes and phyla of life before humanity, and none of that after humanity.

41:00

I mean, there's a discordance here. They said, well, go talk to your science teachers. My science teachers didn't have a clue.

41:07

They said, talk to those science professors, you know. I didn't get an answer for them either. The first time

41:13

I picked up Genesis, the Bible, for six days God creates, on the seventh day he stops creating.

41:21

I said, that answer is a fossil record enigma. Why we see all this evidence before humanity and none of it after humanity, because the last thing that God did in his creation work was to create

41:34

Adam and Eve. Once he created Eve, he stopped creating. So it explains why we don't see any of these new families or classes or orders or phyla of life today, but we saw it in the past.

41:51

It also explains why in astronomy we see lots of evidence for God's miraculous interventions, because in astronomy our data comes from the past.

42:02

It takes like time to reach our telescopes. It explains why so many astronomers believe in God in an afterlife.

42:09

It explains why so few field biologists do, because the field biologists will say, we see no scientific evidence for God's miraculous handiwork.

42:20

Well, of course, they're observing on the wrong day. The seventh day, God's resting from his creation work.

42:27

And you look at Psalm 95 and Hebrews 4. Both of those texts explicitly tell us we're still in God's seventh day.

42:36

The seventh day is not yet finished. So the seventh day is a long time period.

42:42

You would anticipate that the first six days would be long time periods. The other thing

42:47

I noted as a teenager, look at all that happens between God creating Adam and God creating

42:54

Eve. I mean, Adam has to go through three careers before he gets introduced to Eve.

43:00

And the text also says that God looks down at Adam and says, yes, he's naming all these wonderful animals.

43:08

And these are animals that have a capacity to relate to Adam. They're the birds and the mammals. But what did

43:15

God say? He's lonely. And so God created a creature and, you know, put

43:22

Adam to sleep, performed surgery on him. He recovers from the surgery. The moment

43:27

Adam sees Eve, the Hebrew word you see coming out of his mouth in the text, it's used more than 20 times in the

43:36

Old Testament, consistently translated at long last. So that tells me day six is also a long time period because in Genesis 1,

43:48

God creates both the human male and the human female on the sixth day. But in Genesis 2, there's a significant passage of time between God creating

43:59

Adam and God creating Eve. And I joke with audiences that men are different from women.

44:06

It takes a long time before they feel lonely. So it had to be more than a few minutes at the end of a 24 -hour day for him to have this sense of being alone.

44:20

So you're claiming evolution is not what we understand it to be from a

44:26

Darwin perspective. You are saying that every animal that we know was created very intentionally.

44:32

It wasn't just an evolution of one single organism. Well, what you notice in Genesis 1, it uses three distinct

44:39

Hebrew verbs to describe God's creative activity. You've got the word bara, which means to create something brand new that never existed before.

44:49

It's only used three times in the text. First for God creating the universe, creation day five, when

44:56

God creates soulish animals. These are animals that are not just physical, they're also soulish.

45:03

The last time you see it is when God creates human beings. These are creatures that are not just physical and soulish, they're also spiritual.

45:12

Then you have the word asah, which means to manufacture, to take existing material and manufacture it.

45:20

But it means it's not going to happen on its own. It takes a mind and with skill to transform it into something.

45:29

So that's a divine miracle. Then you got the verb hayah, which means let there be.

45:36

So this would open the door for natural process under God's guidance to bring things about.

45:42

So you see the verb hayah for the formation of the continental landmasses. But you see asah and bara when

45:50

God creates the birds and the mammals and when he creates human beings. So it does mean that there is room for some limited naturalistic evolution.

46:01

But naturalistic evolution will not explain the whole story according to Genesis 1.

46:08

And so the birds and the mammals, those are special creation events. Humans are special creation events.

46:15

The creation of the universe is a special creation event. But when it talks about the water cycle, when it talks about let there be light, now

46:26

God created the light when he created the universe. But the reason it's dark on the surface of the waters,

46:33

Earth's primordial atmosphere was 200 times thicker than the atmosphere it has today.

46:39

An atmosphere that thick will let no visible light through. And you actually see that repeated in Job 38.

46:47

Job 38, verses 8 and 9, it says that God had blanketed the earthy seas with clouds that kept the seas dark.

46:56

So notice in Job 38, it's very explicit as to why it's dark on the surface of waters.

47:02

Not because there wasn't a sun or stars. It's opaque because Earth's atmosphere would not let any sunlight through.

47:11

But creation day one, let there be light, that's when God transformed the atmosphere from being opaque to light to being translucent, where light could pass through.

47:23

And the verb to hover over the surface of the waters implies bringing to life.

47:29

So I believe the beginning of creation day one is when we have the first life on planet

47:34

Earth. But it would be microbial life. It takes a long duration of microbial life to chemically transform the planet for it would not be possible to have plants and animals.

47:47

And notice, you don't get vegetation until day three. You don't get animals until day five.

47:54

So it's not either or, it's both. Yes. Wow. So this is something that I've heard.

48:01

And so this might be just a random question. But do you think the composition of the atmosphere may be having more hydration or oxygen in it at the beginning of the development maybe caused people to live to 900, 800 years old?

48:16

I think the real answer is in chapter 13 of my book, Navigating Genesis, is radiation.

48:24

There's two astronomers, Erlikon and Wolfendael, who spent 40 years studying what they called the knee in the cosmic ray spectrum.

48:34

And what they basically have been able to affirm in their research is that 95 % of the killer cosmic rays come from a single supernova eruption that occurred close to the

48:46

Earth somewhere between 20 ,000 and 100 ,000 years ago.

48:52

And so people living before that supernova eruption should be exposed to a lot less killer radiation than people living after the event.

49:03

And what you see in Genesis chapter 11, after the flood, you see an exponential decline in human life spans, which would fit a radiation event.

49:14

And so now there are Christians who speculated that maybe there was a thick water vapor canopy, but that's not going to stop the cosmic rays.

49:23

And so that's not the explanation for why we could live longer. And pumping more oxygen in the atmosphere actually causes you to die sooner.

49:33

So I'd advise you not to go to oxygen bars, at least not at sea level, because when you breathe in extra oxygen, oxygen causes oxidation in your body, which basically over time wears your body out.

49:49

It also means you're going to get more wildfires, which is going to be a problem.

49:55

And with less oxygen, that means you can't do as much in the decades that you live here on Earth.

50:01

So your activity level will be less. So I'm basically making the point we have the optimal oxygen level.

50:08

And that oxygen comes from photosynthetic life, and what's called the deep oxygen cycle.

50:16

We now know that the first oxygenation event is responsible for a huge aggressive buildup of continental land masses.

50:26

And we know it occurred when the Earth was less than half of its present age. Well, notice

50:32

Genesis 1 puts at the beginning of creation day 3. So in fact, part of what

50:38

I've been doing lately is giving lectures saying, notice this, the more we've learned about science and the history of the

50:46

Earth and Earth's life over the past 50 years, the stronger and stronger and tighter and tighter fit we get with what

50:54

Genesis taught 3 ,400 years ago. So again, it's evidence for God's predictive power in the

51:02

Bible. Yeah. The archaeological nerd in me wants to ask, what in the timeline do you think dinosaurs existed in?

51:13

And the Ice Age, I know I have a couple of friends that love geology, and I'm sure they would love to know, but where would that fit in with this timeline?

51:20

Well, as far as dinosaurs go, we shouldn't be surprised they're not mentioned in the Bible. The Bible's inspired for all generations.

51:28

So it constrains itself to vocabulary that all generations would understand.

51:34

Notice that the Bible says nothing about neutrinos. It says nothing about Neanderthals, because those are the only things that modern generations of humanity would even know what they're all about.

51:46

Right. But the dinosaurs, I think, fit into the middle of creation day 5. After the first sea animals, but before we see the radiation of birds and mammals.

51:59

And I think where they're implied most strongly is Psalm 104. Psalm 104 is the longest of the creation

52:07

Psalms, and basically its message is, God creates to pack our planet with as much life as possible, as diverse as possible.

52:17

And if you want really big dinosaurs, you need shallow continental seas.

52:23

You need the water buoyancy to make possible animals of that size. Without the water buoyancy, the biggest land animal you can have is an elephant.

52:34

Elephants are right at the maximum the laws of physics will permit for an animal without water buoyancy.

52:41

But if you've got shallow seas, say 15 to 40 feet deep, you can have 80 ton dinosaurs.

52:49

And so, you know, I've watched Jurassic Park with my sons and basically told them

52:55

T -Rex cannot run that fast on land. If he did, the slightest little stumble, he would injure himself severely.

53:05

And there's no way it could chase a Jeep at 45 miles an hour. Wow. T -Rex was likely hunting big dinosaurs in shallow seas, for the water buoyancy would enable him to be able to move without injuring his massive body.

53:22

And I don't think he was eating lawyers. With those huge jaws, he was eating much bigger creatures.

53:29

Right, right. Yeah. My sons don't like to watch science fiction movies with me. They don't want to know many times the movie is violating the laws of physics.

53:38

That's hilarious. This was one question, and I apologize if this is out of line or, you know, just a little random, but the

53:47

Nephilim, the giants. Before we go there, a quick word on the Ice Age, because you may have brought that up.

53:53

Yes, you're right. What's interesting about Genesis 2 is it says that God put

53:59

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and it's a place where four known rivers come together.

54:06

Two of those rivers still flow today. The other two are dry riverbeds, but they were flowing during the last

54:14

Ice Age. And the only place those four rivers come close together is now 200 feet below sea level.

54:22

It's southeastern portion of the Persian Gulf, which is why I believe

54:27

God created Adam and Eve during the last Ice Age. It's the only time that that location would be above sea level.

54:36

And for the same reason, I believe that Noah's flood was an Ice Age event, because it tells us it took an entire year for the flood waters to recede.

54:46

For to take that long, the water flowing out to the ocean had to be replaced with massive amounts of water from ice and snow melt.

54:56

And to have it last as long as a year, it would have to be an Ice Age event. That makes sense.

55:03

And what's your question about the Nephilim? So do you believe that they were giants, or do you think that was more of a literary form or symbolism?

55:14

Well, I mean, it seems like the historical Old Testament texts speak of these

55:19

Nephilim as being real individuals. It talks about their height.

55:25

It talks about how much armor and weapons they could take in the battle. You get the most details about Goliath.

55:33

Even with a short cubit, he's nine feet nine inches tall, and took a minimum of 250 pounds of weapons and armor into battle.

55:43

And in navigating Genesis, I have a little piece called

55:48

The Physics of Basketball, making the point that the sport of basketball means that your capacity to sink a basket, given equal skill, goes up with a square of your height, which means a seven foot tall individual will score twice as many baskets as a five foot basketball player, given equal skills.

56:12

So we notice the best players in the NBA are not those above seven feet inches tall.

56:19

It's around six and a half feet or six feet, eight inches. And when you get above seven feet, you lose mobility.

56:28

And, you know, I know one, I've met one Hollywood actor who's seven feet, seven inches tall.

56:35

He played the role of Jaws in one of those 007 movies. But by his late thirties, he was in a wheelchair.

56:45

You know, his body was just too tall to maintain mobility. And there have been rare humans who've lived, who've gotten past eight feet tall, and they don't live long.

56:58

The tallest man was eight feet 11. He died at age 39, and he died of physical exhaustion.

57:05

So I argue that there has to be something supernatural about these

57:10

Nephilim. And if you look at Genesis 6 .2 and 6 .4, it says the sons of God came to the daughters of men and intercourse with them.

57:21

And the result was the Nephilim, also referred to as the Raphaim, or the

57:27

Anakites, or the heroes of old elsewhere in the Old Testament. And you read the book of Samuel, he refers to these as you see no mention of females, they're all males, and refers to them as having birth defects, six fingers and six toes.

57:46

And they're all evil, but they're all powerful warriors. And you've got

57:52

Og the King of Bashan, who had an iron bed 13 feet long, six feet wide minimum.

57:58

So he was probably even bigger than Goliath. But what

58:05

I did in navigating Genesis, I basically say, here are all the passages about the sons of God and the children of God.

58:13

And what you notice is the only humans that ever get that title are humans that have been baptized in the

58:21

Holy Spirit. And that didn't happen until the day of Pentecost. There's only one

58:26

Old Testament passage that refers to sons of God as humans. And it's a prophecy where God speaks to the

58:34

Jews and says a time will come when you'll become sons of God, but not now.

58:41

And so notice that Jesus referred to his followers as sons of men in the

58:46

Gospels. In the Epistles, they're only referred to as sons of God, or children of God.

58:52

You also notice that Jesus in the Gospels referred to himself as a son of man.

58:59

In the Epistles, he's only called the son of God. And I think he purposely took that title, son of man, to say there's a much more important event that will happen in the future.

59:11

Because of his resurrection, we can become permanently indwelt with the Holy Spirit. And that's when we become transformed from being children of men to becoming children of God.

59:23

But that also implies that the sons of God, back in Genesis chapter 6, were not humans, or at least not supernaturally endowed humans.

59:34

And so people have made the point these sons of God might have been fallen angels, or they might have been fallen angels that possessed fallen human beings.

59:45

Demon -possessed humans, or they might have been angels themselves. And then you've got

59:50

Jude 6 referring to certain angels who left their estate.

59:58

That's the English translation, but in the Greek original, it's a phrase that basically connotes bestiality.

01:00:06

So you've got Jude 6 accusing these fallen angels, these demons, of committing bestiality.

01:00:13

And I've had quite a bit of experience with demon activity, not on purpose,

01:00:19

I just kind of ran into it. But one of the things I've observed is that these demons seemed obsessed with illicit sex.

01:00:30

So it tells us in the Bible that the angels do not marry. But it doesn't say they cannot marry, it's just that God has forbidden them to marry.

01:00:41

And what it says in Jude 6 is that, because of the evil that these fallen angels committed, they've been consigned to the abyss.

01:00:51

And notice when Jesus cast out demons, the demons said, please don't send us to the abyss.

01:00:58

And Jesus didn't send them to the abyss. Jude 6 basically makes the point, the abyss is a special prison house for demons that went way too far in their commitment of evil.

01:01:11

They actually violated, sexually violated human beings. But notice too, that God was intent on getting rid of the

01:01:23

Nephilim, the flood wiped out the Nephilim. And it also tells us in Genesis 6, verse 4, after the flood, they came back, the sons of God came back.

01:01:36

And so they impregnated women before the flood, and they did so again after the flood.

01:01:42

But notice that God had the Jews, first with Moses, and then last of all with David, wiping out the last of the

01:01:51

Nephilim. It was David's mighty men that killed off the last of the Nephilim.

01:01:56

Now I say that because I've run into modern day Bible prophecy people who claim the

01:02:03

Nephilim are still here. My interpretation of the Bible is they're not here. They got wiped out by David's mighty men.

01:02:12

We shouldn't be worried about who we encounter today being these Nephilim creatures. And there's nobody running around that's 10 or 12 feet tall.

01:02:22

So they're gone. God took care of them because he says, I don't want them spreading evil like they did during the

01:02:30

Old Testament times. Right. And not to say that there's not still demonic presence. Oh yeah, definitely.

01:02:36

People that we meet, that's still happening, but they're not going to be 12 feet tall. Well, I mean, if any demon dares to do that, they're heading for the abyss.

01:02:44

And from what I can tell from the Bible, they don't want to go to the abyss. It's not a pleasant place. Yeah. I think that was the fastest hour

01:02:53

I have ever experienced in my life, Hugh. That went by so quickly. And I do have two more questions for you if you have the time for it.

01:03:00

Sure. One is, so how do you, astrophysicist and Christian, advise other

01:03:09

Christians and potential Christians and atheists? How do you advise Christians to lead a conversation about Christianity with their atheist friends?

01:03:19

Well, I tell them there is no silver bullet. You know, it bothered me when I was a young Christian, all these organizations say, here's a pamphlet.

01:03:28

This will work in every Christian. It doesn't. Every non -Christian is different from every other non -Christian.

01:03:34

God made every human being distinct. He's given us a distinct mission, a distinct purpose.

01:03:40

So my mission is not the same as yours. And I advise Christians, seek out your individual special mission that God has assigned to you.

01:03:50

But when you engage non -Christians, step one, find out what kind of non -Christian you're talking to.

01:03:57

How do you do that? You ask questions. And it's easy. Everybody, at least non -Christians

01:04:03

I've talked to, they all love to talk about themselves. And so ask them questions with the goal of finding out, okay, what are their issues?

01:04:14

You know, what kind of reasons do they need to come to faith in Jesus Christ? And I've also found if you ask them enough questions, they eventually ask you a question.

01:04:25

And that usually opens up a door. And also I share with people, read the book of Acts.

01:04:31

Look at all the amazing ways God gave Paul and Peter and the other possible amazing opportunities to share their faith with people he prepared.

01:04:41

Look at the jailer. You know, how the jailer asked Paul, what must

01:04:46

I do? And a whole jailer and his whole family come to faith in Christ.

01:04:52

And here you got Paul in chains, leading members of Caesar's family to Christ. So it's like the opportunities are there if you let

01:05:01

God use you, but there is a condition. You need to prepare good reasons and you need to share them with gentleness and respect.

01:05:10

And that's the hard part. And people tell me, well, how do you develop the gentleness and respect that's going to allow non -Christians to listen to you?

01:05:19

I said, well, ask for feedback. If the sharing of your faith doesn't go as well as you thought, just say, can you please share with me where I might've been a bit arrogant in what

01:05:29

I said or obnoxious? And one of the things I've learned in my experience is they're really eager to tell you where you've been obnoxious.

01:05:39

And that will help you the next time you engage a non -Christian. And get feedback from your fellow

01:05:45

Christians and just say, hey, if you see a way I can improve the way I'm sharing my faith,

01:05:50

I'm all ears. So be open to critique. And it takes time, but it's the way

01:05:57

God builds Christian character in your life. So I tell people in our congregation, sharing your faith is

01:06:04

God's tool for shaping you into the character attributes that God wants you to manifest.

01:06:11

We're to be Christ -like in our behavior. And that doesn't come instantly. It takes years.

01:06:17

It takes decades. But sharing your faith is one of the most effective ways to build that into your life.

01:06:24

Very simple, very humble. And I think humility is definitely the core of that and taking feedback.

01:06:31

I think it's not, I mean, sharing your faith can be absolutely terrifying, but also taking feedback can be really hard too.

01:06:37

So really, really great advice. And last, this was actually a friend of mine asked me to ask you this today is how would you define

01:06:45

God? Well, I was once speaking at NASA Houston at a government research facility.

01:06:53

There were astronauts there, there were scientists there. And the director came to me and said, this is a government research facility.

01:07:02

I forbid you from using the word God in your talk. And I said, I don't see that in the constitution.

01:07:09

I think I've got the right to use the word God. And he says, well, maybe you're right, but I don't care.

01:07:14

I'm the director here. You can't use the word God. I said, well, how about this?

01:07:20

Can I talk about the causal agent beyond space and time who created the universe and personally designed and shaped it so that we human beings can thrive here on planet earth?

01:07:31

He said, yeah, you can do that. So I had the opportunity multiple times that day to define who

01:07:38

God is. And what was wonderful is the audience during the Q and A time said, can you actually define this causal agent a little more detail?

01:07:49

And so, yes, I said, I can do that. This causal agent has attributes.

01:07:56

He not only created, he created for the purpose of redemption. I said, if you want to be a better scientist, try this as an experiment.

01:08:06

Do your scientific research from a biblical redemptive perspective where God designs everything he created to make possible the redemption of billions of human beings from their sin and evil.

01:08:19

Try it and see if it makes you a more successful scientist. And my goal, of course, is when they experience that success, they'll realize maybe

01:08:29

I need to read more about what this God is all about and actually begin to look at the

01:08:34

Bible and see what it has to say. Very well said. Thank you. I can't thank you enough for your time.

01:08:42

I mean, I'm so grateful to have this wisdom shared with it to fit into your schedule. I always like to give my guests an opportunity to plug anything, which you've done a great job plugging a lot of your work throughout this, but anything specific you have coming out, any talks that you want people to attend.

01:08:58

I know that you do have a live show every Sunday with The Paradoxes. Anything you want to share that you want to promote?

01:09:05

Well, I've now written 23 books and I think there's eight or nine of them where we give away free chapters.

01:09:12

And you can get a free chapter of these books at reasons .org slash Ross. I also put out a regular blog called

01:09:20

Today's New Reason to Believe and they can get that at reasons .org. We have a

01:09:26

YouTube channel. If you just google my name, Hugh Ross YouTube, you can watch lots of entertaining debates

01:09:33

I've done with leading atheist scientists. Some of them are actually quite humorous.

01:09:39

So you can check that out. And as you mentioned, I have a class for skeptics on Sundays called

01:09:47

Paradoxes and that's paradoxes .org. They can participate live through live streaming or they can download the recordings.

01:09:57

Amazing. Amazing. Well, I hope to have you back on. I feel like we've just scratched the surface, but thank you so much,

01:10:03

Hugh. I really appreciate your time and I hope to see you again soon. My pleasure. And I love the jacket you're wearing.

01:10:11

Living proof of a loving God. Thank you. I love this company. It's called God's Love Overcomes and it's just an

01:10:18

Instagram account, but I love their stuff. I'm always wearing their stuff. So thank you. Well, I'm impressed that you actually didn't wear that in Hawaii.

01:10:26

I mean, that's got to be a warm outfit you're wearing. It doesn't take much for me to feel cold now.

01:10:33

It's like 75 degrees in the shade and I'm freezing. Oh, wow. Anyways, thank you.