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September 19, 2017:
BRYAN OSBORNE, a blogger, speaker & author for Answers in Genesis & teacher for Answers Bible Curriculum will address:
“QUICK ANSWERS to TOUGH QUESTIONS”
Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City,.
Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 19th day of September 2017.
Before I introduce my guest for the day, I want to give you a reason to mark your calendar, not that every day isn't a reason to listen to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, but a very timely interview is going to be held this Friday, God willing, that's September 22nd, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time with my friend David Wood.
David Wood, who many of you may know, is a Christian apologist who primarily focuses his ministry of apologetics to the Muslim people and also atheists, because David was once an atheist himself before coming to Christ.
But we're interviewing David Wood this Friday to pay tribute to his very, very close friend, Nabeel Qureshi, who just last Saturday entered into eternity with Christ after a courageous, valiant bout with cancer.
And David is going to be on the program, as I said, to pay tribute to his dear friend, a friend who was Muslim, who David, while going to college with Nabeel Qureshi, and as his friend, led him to Christ.
And not only led him to Christ, but subsequently, eventually led him into the apologetics field himself, the Christian apologetics field. And so, God willing, we are going to be having that interview this Friday to pay tribute to this precious brother in Christ who went home to be to the Lord, went home to be with the Lord at age 34.
And I hope that you share this information with many other folks that you know who may be familiar with Nabeel Qureshi's ministry and David Wood's ministry. And we would love to hear from you if you have some words of commendation of how Nabeel blessed your life, perhaps, through his own Christian apologetics ministry, or perhaps he's a friend or a loved one or someone that you were just blessed to know.
And we are today very happy to have, for the very first time on Iron Trip, Brian Osborne. And he is a blogger, a speaker, and an author for Answers in Genesis. And he also is a curriculum writer and teacher for Answers Bible Curriculum.
Today, we're going to be addressing his book, Quick Answers to Tough Questions. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you, for the very first time on Iron.
Trip, Brian Osborne. Thank you very much. It's definitely an honor to be here. It's a blessing.
And in studio with me is the Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co-host.
And once again, it's great to be on the air with you.
And I'll give our listeners right now our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with questions for Brian. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.
And please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence, unless for some personal and private reason you are compelled to remain anonymous. Perhaps you disagree with your own pastor on a certain issue we're talking about, or perhaps you disagree with your own spouse, or some reason you are really compelled to remain anonymous, we will grant your request.
But otherwise, please give us at least your first name, city and state and country of residence. And first of all, tell us, I typically, Brian, always have my guests, when they are on the program for the very first time, have them give a summary of their testimony of how they came to Christ, what providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord used in their lives to draw them to Christ, what religious background, if any, you were raised in, and so on.
If you could do that before we begin our.
Discussion on the subject at hand. Oh, yeah, that would be my pleasure. Growing up, I grew up in North Carolina, the Piedmont area, kind of very Bible Belt-ish, if you will. I got saved in denominations, actually, for a little bit, hopped around a little bit, got a taste of Methodist faith, got baptized, actually, I was in the Methodist church, so I got sprinkled.
And at that point, my mindset was probably more along the lines of kind of getting fire insurance more than anything else. And I would not say that would be the time, where God really just drew me to repentance and to Himself.
And it was just a few years later, 17 years old, driving home from church one night, a Wednesday night, and I was riding in my car, in full rebellion of my heart, had my own plans for what I was going to do that day and that week.
And as I was praying home, as I was going home, people were praying for me at the church and other things. And literally, I don't remember exactly the train of thought that led up to the situation, but of my sin.
And I just cried out to Him in repentance right there, just driving down Highway 85 in North Carolina. And as I broke down repentance, confessed my sin, the Lord of my life, and there was a joy that overtook me from that point on, and my life truly was changed from that point.
And really, I've never been the same ever since, as God has just done a radical work in my life in so many different ways. He's just been molding me, sanctifying me since that time.
And you are not aware of any specific thing that triggered that in you, that made you.
Filled with such remorse and repentance? Well, it was literally, I'm 48 years old now, and I was 17 at the time, so it was 23 years ago. And I was driving down the highway, and I remember up to that point, I will say this, I grew up in a church background.
I kind of knew a lot of the right information. And I knew I could feel God tugging at my heart years prior. And basically, a few months before I got to back off, I wanted to just live life my own way as a foolish boy.
And so I was indulging in my sins, and as I was driving home, it was at that point, maybe just recognizing how to just indulge and rebel. And I don't remember the train of thought that led up to it, but I remember just being utterly aware of how heavy my sin was in the sight of a holy God, like I did at that moment.
And it led me to change, and it was at that point,.
My life was never the same. Well, praise God for His sovereignty and mercy over you. By the way, on a side note, I just want to recommend to our listeners what Brian just told us in regard to his testimony made me remember the testimony of Evel Knievel.
And Evel Knievel, if you look up his testimony on YouTube, it is quite remarkable. He is giving this testimony in, of all places, Robert Shuler's Crystal Cathedral, which I view as a false church. It's no longer in existence, but it was a false church, in my opinion.
But Evel Knievel, nonetheless, was giving a solidly biblical testimony of his salvation, and it's quite remarkable. And it reminded me, your testimony reminded me of it only because he didn't really know why he began to be overwhelmed with this recognition that he was going to hell, that he was a sinner.
Unlike you, he was not raised, I don't believe, in a Bible-belt home, in a Christian home, but he just really recognized seemingly out of nowhere that he needed to embrace Christ or he would be in hell, and he radically transformed his life, this work of the Spirit in him.
But you say you're from North Carolina. Just out of curiosity, the only places that I have spent any amount of time in North Carolina are Charlotte and Boone and Blowing Rock. Were you raised anywhere near any of those places?
I was raised about an hour north, in a place called Thomasville, close to High Point, or Greensboro, Winston-Salem, just right in the middle of North Carolina. A lovely place, loved my grandma, still that in me a long time ago, and so I have that blessing.
From that heritage. And when I was in Boone, North Carolina, I was actually there at a Christian rehabilitation ministry for drug and alcohol addiction, and I was there because of alcohol addiction, and the Lord used that place very powerfully in my life.
He brought in colony ministries in Boone, North Carolina, but everybody wore the tar, well not everybody, but most of the people were wearing the tar heels, jerseys, and so on, and I never got really a unanimously same answer as to what a tar heel is.
Someone told me that they thought it was a goat, a kind of a goat, but do you know what is a tar heel? It's kind of embarrassing. I'm not really.
Sure. I mean, I know for tobacco, maybe it's the tobacco on the hill, stepping in there, I can't remember for sure, but yeah, I don't know if anybody knows. Maybe that's just a trade secret.
Of the college. Chris, you're going to have to wait a little longer to get a definitive answer,.
I think. You mean heaven, is that what you mean? Maybe, that's where, maybe.
Hold on, let me google that real quick, hold on.
When in your life did you realize that the issue of the creation evolution debate was such an important matter in the church, such a huge divide, not only between the Christians and the atheists, but even amongst the body of Christ, we have some huge differences in regarding to the age of the earth and whether theistic evolution is true or false.
When did these areas of thought become such a primary area of interest for you?
Yeah, I'll tell you, that's a really good question, and I'll try not to make the answer too long. For me, the part of the testimony here for me is that I grew up in a Christian home, in a lot of different churches, and I never saw the importance of this issue until much later in life.
So back in my history, I went to church growing up, went to Christian school when I was younger, graduated high school, went to a Christian college, majored in biblical studies, had a minor in Greek and Christian education, graduated from there, started teaching in a public school, teaching Bible history in a public school, a really unique setting, and it wasn't until years into that that I was first really introduced to creation apologetics and the God's words being understood, the divide that's happening within much of the church, and that was in my mid -20s.
I'd never been introduced to this, and I grew up in a church, I went to a Christian school and never knew about any of this, not really, it wasn't introduced really well. And if I had not known about any of this, then how much so?
Well, for the reason I could see the need for this, it's not even an issue on table, which is as dumb as you think we are, but the more I looked at this, the more I recognized the reason this is so important is because, and the gospel based in that authority, because if you can't trust the Bible's history, why trust what it says about salvation?
And so, as I got more familiar with the heartbeat of this, and I connect with that, and also see the need to spread this message to...
I want to read just a brief portion of Ken Ham's forward to your book, Quick Answers to Tough Questions, that we're going to be addressing today. Ken Ham says, Quick Answers to Tough Questions is your handy tool that offers relevant answers to many of the pressing questions people have.
It is dedicated to upholding the authority of God's word from its very first verse and to answering the skeptics of our day. Of course, the gospel is presented in the book. And this book appears to be a book for laymen, perhaps laymen of all ages, and you have basically five major sections of this book.
We have a perfect creation, we have a corrupt creation, we have a catastrophic flooded creation, and I make a correction here, this is six major sections. A confused creation, an evolutionary takeover of creation, and a redeemed creation.
Why don't we start with a perfect creation, but what are you mainly covering.
In that section? For the foundation of how God made the original creation, that it was indeed a perfect creation. One of the questions we get asked often is, you know, why do we live in a world that's full of so much death and suffering, and why do we have people dying of cancer?
Recognizing that God did give us a perfect creation. He gave us what he wanted, and we're standing up God's original very sin that brought death and suffering into the father's own man, unto the own man, which is of that sin and the effect on the world.
And so we start from the core foundation of understanding that history to answer some of those fundamental questions. I even back up a little bit before that section, the introduction of this book is to tell people why all of this.
I travel around 30 weekends a year to a lot of different copies of the biblical authority and the gospel based on that authority. Because really if you look around, so many people today, especially younger generations, but there are many who don't know why they don't believe the book.
And if the Bible gets history wrong, then why trust it about salvation? This is ultimately a biblical authority. And this is where the attack is occurring today, in God's word, and doubted and rejected, just like in Genesis 3 verse 1, when he did with Eve.
And so we want to recognize where the attack is happening, defend the faith, stand on the foundation of God's word, in order to boldly proclaim the gospel, Jesus the foundation. That's why we say these answers.
Are so important. Yes, and you have a lot of people in the 20th century, and in fact, they've been doing it for every century. They mock the stories, especially of the Old Testament, because many of these stories that we as Christians, at least we as Christians who take the Bible seriously and believe it is the inerrant word of God, God-breathed teachings that are found in there, but they are mocked because the stories are so fantastic.
The stories defy a human experience and logic. You know, the fact that we have the universe being created out of nothing, and we have man being created out of the earth, and we have Eve being created out of him, out of his rib, and we have all these things happening in this section, the Hebrew scriptures, this section of our Bible.
We have, you know, the flood, the global flood, where two of every animal that would have perished in the flood taken into the ark, and people look at these as merely children's fairy tales, because if you are not filled with the Holy Spirit, if you do not take the Bible seriously, you're, that could be a logical thing to think.
I mean, if you have not the indwelling of the Holy Spirit guiding and teaching you, and you're not thinking as a reborn individual, this is something that you might readily think, and we shouldn't necessarily be overly condemnatory, even though we are obviously supposed to be disagreeing radically with the unbeliever.
We shouldn't be so quick to condemn them as being a reprobate or idiots, even though they may be calling us idiots. Don't you think that when we approach this area of Genesis, we have to recognize that these are fantastic things, that if we did not believe in God, we would reject them as childhood fairy tales as well?
Yeah, no, I definitely agree with.
What you're saying there, and one of the things we say, I say in the book, one of the first chapters, actually the fourth one, two worldviews, God's Word versus man's, and we say often as a ministry, this is a battle between the two fundamental religions of this world, between two foundational authorities.
Either God's Word is the authority, we build our things to this Lord, we take everything, either God's Word is the authority in some way, shape, or form, and man's Word becomes the authority. People have the same evidence, this is not a battle over here, we got this amount over here, the evolutions have their pile over here, and whoever has the most evidence, they win.
That's not the debate. Actually, what it is, we got the same rock layers, the same distant starlight, the same DNA, the same fossils, but we interpret those things differently in the present, and make different guesses about their origin based on our different starting assumptions about the unseen past, based on our different worldviews.
And the bottom line is, if you start with the wrong assumption, you'll most likely get where his wife was going deaf. So one night, he snuck up behind her about 10 feet away, and he whispered, he got a few feet closer, can you hear me, honey?
Nothing. He got right behind her, can you hear me, honey? To which she responded, for the third time, yes! Right? Yeah, it wasn't her problem, right? Right. But you see, wrong assumptions, wrong conclusions, and here's the thing, secular scientists and secular people give really wrong conclusions about certain things.
Why? Because they're starting with the wrong assumptions. And you know what, it's no big surprise that someone who's rejected God's Word will believe that maybe life came from non-life, or aliens created life, or evolution is a good theory.
They're being consistent with their worldview, with their foundation. What we would say is, they have the wrong foundation. They should be built on thinking of God's Word. Of course, we recognize, ultimately, that is a heart in the Bible.
Why? Because we're going to righteousness. We as sinners want to be our own God and His Word. And so we recognize, ultimately, it's an authority issue, which is ultimately...
Amen. You know, you were referring to Romans 1 there, and something I still don't quite understand about Romans 1, because basically Romans 1 is teaching us that there are no atheists or agnostics because of the fact that every human knows the truth but suppresses it.
Now, in defining that, it's hard for me to know, and I know that there's even differences of opinion amongst Christians on it, but when somebody says that they're an atheist or an agnostic, do you think that they're actually lying, or is this something that they have suppressed so deeply and have become so accustomed to rebelling against God and rejecting His existence that they are not currently conscious of it?
How do you define what Romans 1 is talking about when it's saying that they know the truth but suppress it?
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think that's going to depend on the person we're talking about, how long they've been suppressing the truth, how long they've been hardening their heart, giving over to sin they are based on their time frame.
Of course, people much smarter may have tried to dive into the depths of this passage, but I think it does depend on the person. I think some genuinely think what they think is right. Some use it as an excuse.
You know, I think the bottom line is, you know, a non-believer can't find God for the same reason a thief can't find a cop. Does it want to? And I think ultimately that's really the bottom line issue.
We like our sin, and whether we recognize how much we're doing it or not, we are suppressing that truth of God. You know, the truth of God's creation screams at us that there's a creator. Our conscience tells us there must be a God, and we suppress it simply because we want to do what we want.
I thought about, from this perspective, if you hear or Lawrence Krauss, and you hear some of the things they start breaks for them in a particular way, I pray that they come to repentance. They recognize their sin, and they bow to Christ as Lord before they die, and they get saved.
It's just an awesome testimony of God's power and His grace, but if they don't get saved, when they stand before God, I heard Richard Dawkins say that if he stands before God and God is real, he'll start asking God, why didn't you show yourself?
Why didn't you prove yourself? Why'd you make yourself so hard to find? And he's acting like he's going to put God on trial, but in truth, if he doesn't get saved, and he stands before God, as soon as he's before God, he will know in an instant that he is mine, and how he will recognize automatically he has suppressed the truth that God has made himself obvious, and he rejected it because he wanted to be his own God.
There will be no question. There will be no arguing with God. He will know that God is holy. Reminds us of why this is so important, but also ultimately does get back to that really the heart issue that we in our sin, no surprise.
God has got it. Amen. That's why you would have somebody who is considered.
By most people to be a genius, Professor Stephen Hawking. He actually believes, as you were referring to this before without naming him, but he actually believes that the existence of life on Earth began with aliens from other planets, and here you have somebody who's considered a genius, and even though scientific evidence completely militates against this notion, we have never discovered a planet that is capable of sustaining human or even any kind of life that's anything similar to ours, and yet you have somebody that hates God and his word so much, and people like him, that they would rather believe something as insane as that than believe in the biblical account.
And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. Of course, you've noticed.
That it's much more prevalent now on the History Channel and all that about aliens, and I think that they're trying to put that before our face so much that after a while it will not be considered.
In any way weird. Right. We're going to go to our first break right now, and I want to get more into the creation as being perfect, and because there is, as you know, debate that continues to go on amongst professing Christians.
I would even say amongst genuine Christians. I disagree with old Earth creationists very strongly on that area of theology, but that would tend to muddle the area of the biblical account of a perfect creation because you have death before the fall and things like that.
But I want to have you get into that a little bit more before we take any of our listener questions. We already have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered by you. If anybody else would like to get online and have your question asked and answered, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA, and only remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable because the question regards a personal and private matter.
Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Brian Osborne. I am Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.
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And all of these hardback reformed commentaries are 50 off. Well, welcome back. We are interviewing today Brian Osborne on his book, Quick Answers to Tough Questions. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
And Brian, if you could revisit the concept of this creation being perfect. Yeah, no, absolutely. Before I do so,.
I just wanted to say really quickly why during the break I did go to the UNC website to look up what a Tar Heel officially was. To set your mind at ease, they have no said understanding of its origin either.
They have a few different theories, but nothing else. They know it's not even UNC Chapel Hill. You're not alone, brother. Why do Bible believers believe creation? And the fundamental answer to that is because that's what the Bible teaches, the teaching of creation.
God made it originally perfect. He called it very, and so He gave mankind what He wanted for them. And so, and this is so important because what the Bible says for us is that after He made that perfect creation and then gave them the tree of knowledge and the option to obey or disobey, death was therefore set as a consequence.
You will surely die if you disobey me. And we know from the Bible, it teaches from beginning to end, that death entered this world as a result, and death is a consequence. It's an intrusion on God's perfect creation, which, as you know, will one day be dealt with and thrown into the lake of fire.
When Christ returns, there'll be no more death, no more suffering, no more bloodshed, back to its perfect state. And so, we see this clear biblical teaching of death, and that has, God gave us this perfect estate in the.
Beginning. Now, as I hinted at earlier, the old earth creationists, those who actually believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, they would say that this perfect creation would only be referring to sin specifically because they believe that death occurred amongst animal life and plant life prior to the fall.
And this is where, one of the areas where there is a huge divide between the old earth and young earth creationists, and why would this, in your opinion, be a violation of proper exegesis to say that the creation is perfect, and we're only speaking about sin, and it has nothing to do with the death of animal and plant life, and it only is in regard to the.
Introduction of death of humans. Speaking, we don't see the death of an animal until after Adam sinned. That'd be one thing you see there. After they sinned, then God comes and kills an animal. He sheds his blood to make clothing for Adam and Eve.
It's the Lamb of God who shed his blood. One thing to think about, if you, and then when Christ returns, does that mean animals still die when he returns? Is there still bloodshed? Is that still happening on the earth?
That'd be a conundrum. Also, I think when you look at the passages that deal and talk about through man's sin and the world death as a consequence, Romans 8 .22, that sin affected everything. All of creation is groaning in pain as a result of what?
Of mankind. It affected animals. It affected dirt. And I know many do try to jump through hermeneutical gymnastics to try to make it fit within the biblical text. You're definitely always kind of twisting and prodding to try to get this idea.
People often ask, couldn't God have used evolution if he wanted to in millions of years? Yes, he could have, because he's God. He can do whatever he wants. The question is not what God could have done, bringing death and suffering into this world.
Death as a consequence affecting all of creation. Death will be one day dealt with when Christ returns. And so that concept and metanarrative, if you will, of the individual text all point to that clear truth.
And you can try to twist it to fit with man's ideas, but you're going to change or affect multiple dots.
And therefore there were no carnivores before the fall. Yep. And it's obviously death is only speaking about animals and humans. It's not referring to vegetation, because obviously the animals and Adam and Eve ate vegetables and plant life.
That's right. And plants don't die in the biblical sense that we think of, the biblical understanding of death. They don't have the nefesh in them, the soul, like animals or humans. And we kind of understand this instinctively.
There's a good analogy, you know, if you're walking in the woods and you see a dead deer, you know, it's kind of deep, and you're walking with your feet on that dead deer for a rest. That'd be weird.
That'd also be the end of the marriage, probably.
That's right, yeah. So if you see a tree that's fallen over and it's rotted out, you know, it's still straight enough to hold you, we have no qualms whatsoever sitting on that fallen tree, because it's not dead in the biblical sense.
It was never alive in the biblical sense, plant life and of course animal and human life. So the Bible has asked enough.
All right, let's go to some of our questions. We have Bruce in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who says, my question for Brian Osborne is, is there any truth to the assertion that Charles Darwin on his deathbed may have renewed his faith and renounced evolution?
Yeah, that's a part of a lot of Dr. Tommy Mitchell, another speaker for the ministry, did a whole in-depth series on this. And he did a lot of reading into the in-depth researches. No, most likely that is, you know, lifestyle was, you know, someone he loved and cared about that he did repent and truly confess Christ as Lord.
That would be wonderful. But there's no actual record of it. It's something that was invented by someone who's a little excited to have that as a point to share, but does not have a root in history, unfortunately.
Yeah, I actually heard that myth repeated at a Bible conference that I was recently at. It wasn't by one of the speakers, it was by somebody who was in attendance, who got up to a microphone and made that announcement.
But thank you, Bruce in Pittsburgh. Please give us your full mailing address in Pittsburgh so we can have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship you a free copy of Quick Answers to Tough Questions by our guest, Brian Osborne and Bodie Hodge, who we've had on this program.
I believe Bodie is Kenham's son-in-law,.
Right? That's correct. Yeah, yeah. Bodie's a great guy. Enjoyed working with him on the book. That's another speaker and writer. And it was great to tag team with him to put this thing together.
Great. And we have Daniel in San Jose, California, who says, thank you for having this discussion, brothers. Can you ask Brian Osborne what motivated him to engage in apologetics, especially with Answers in Genesis?
We already touched on that to a bit, but you can expand on that. Also, where has he seen the most growth or breakthrough as far as reaching people with his apologetic? Was it amongst adults or youth? Can you give detail on some of the questions that you yourself have been asked and struggled with throughout your time in apologetics?
Wow, there's a lot of good questions in that question, Daniel. By the way, I was just in California, got to see the Sequoias up close and personal, which was awesome. I got to go to Yosemite Park with my wife.
We really enjoyed that. And going back to Pasadena here in a couple weeks, a beautiful area. I guess the first part was what got me interested. For me, it was a recognition of recognizing where God's Word is under attack today, to realize that really what the devil has done.
If you go back to Genesis chapter 3, the first attack on God's Word was when the devil said to Eve, did God really say? It was very clever because what he was doing was getting to doubt God's Word. And the method was so effective, he's used it ever since.
It comes in different forms, but same basic attack. And we would say one of the main ways he's doing this attack today is by attacking the Bible's history with the idea of evolution, ideas like evolution, millions of years, and eight men.
Using those ideas to get people to question God's Word, to doubt God's Word, and to reject God's Word. And so really my passion for this was born out of a recognition of today, particularly in the Western culture.
Because God's Word's always been an attack, but where it's happening today, and equipping ourselves and other people with God's Word, where this attack is happening, so we can stand on the firm foundation that is God's Word, not fall away like so many are, and then boldly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Giving answers, show people God's Word is true, to then clearly proclaim the answer, Jesus Christ. And I will share with Daniel and all your listeners that that is what this is all about. This is not about winning a debate.
If you're just all about winning a debate, and that's all that we do in the course, we've done nothing. What is the eternal destiny of a million dinosaurs, but don't share the gospel of Jesus Lord. So we're using all of these answers to emphasize the truth that God's Word is true, so we can proclaim the gospel to people through the proclamation of His Word and the gospel.
God works and changes hearts and minds, and draws people to Himself, and that's just so needed in our day and age. So that's why we do it, sharing the gospel. In you, when people ask, why do you have hope?
Well, it's because of what I believe. What do you believe? I believe the gospel, and here's why I believe it. God's Word is true, and defending that truth and proclaiming the truth of the gospel. And so I was a little long, I'm sorry.
Ultimately, we're doing apologetics as part of evangelism, of sharing the gospel to.
World. Now, he asked if there's any age group that might have been more dominant as far as people being convinced of your arguments through the, obviously, the work of the Holy Spirit. Now, obviously, let's remove tiny children out of this, because even an unregenerate, an unregenerate child will sing, Jesus loved me, this I know, before the Bible tells me.
So if his parents sing it with them, I mean, a child is going to parrot his parents and his teachers, or her parents and her teachers. But as far as teenagers or older adults, where do you find, if any, if there is any difference at all, according to our questioner, Daniel, where you have seen most breakthrough in your apologetics.
Work? I tell you, the most, it's hard to quantify that. I will try to give an answer, be more specific, but I see it in every age group in different ways. These adults who are dealing with this more from their past, they actually, when they start hearing answers to particular questions about dinosaurs and rock layers and ape men, and there are biblical answers for those things, and the importance of having those answers for their grandkids, many grandparents respond really, really well, for a long time.
And then they, of course, influence on them in a biblical way, and of course, they recognize that they are walking away from the faith. By the time they reach college, so, I mean, there's, you know, the grandparents respond well because they have kids in themselves, and I tell you, teens respond well because these are their questionaries sent out, Luke uses on Mackinac Island, and it's such a beautiful place, and there's a thousand, and why?
What about evolution? Well, I know it's flood and the rock, you know, one blood, one race. Came to that because those in-depth, super techie, just a good biblical worldview, all those things that God's Word is true.
And that's really the goal of the book, honestly. It does not need to be a super long answer to get a good answer to carbon dating, or what about dinosaur, and defend their faith and reclaim the gospel.
Now, the notorious troubling question.
That comes up usually at any event involving creation and evolution, especially if you have someone who is a skeptic, they're always going to bring up, if there's enough time allotted for a conversation to develop, where Cain found his wife.
And obviously, that may make us uneasy because we know, as Christians, that must involve something that would later in history be condemned by God as incest. But that's the only conclusion we can draw, is that that was what was going on.
For the earth to be populated, am I right? The text, just in case, you know, you got Adam and Eve of Cain and Abel, and Cain kills Abel, then we look at his wife in later Bill of City and so forth. It doesn't say he found his wife from, and if you want the answer, you're sitting in Genesis 4, you flip the page, go to Genesis chapter 5, and we get the answer.
Actually, Jewish tradition suggests that they, Adam and Eve for 900 years, and you have perfect bodies, why not, right? And so, most likely, they had many, many kids, and that would mean, ultimately, that Cain had to marry, most likely, a sister or a very close relative.
And people, yes, no, probably only after counseling, right? And the answer is, yes, you can marry, you're saying to me, aha, you're from Kentucky, I knew it.
Yeah, first cousins are not prohibited in the Bible, that's not under the incest code.
Right, but wait, hold on now, if you're not marrying a relative, you're not marrying a human, then you've got real big issues, right? Today, if you marry a close relative today, it's very plausible that you two have very similar genetic codes.
If you guys get married and pass on that same mutation to your child, it's likely they are born with a birth defect, right? So we marry someone further away in relation to us to get a good reason why we don't marry a close relative today, it's because of the mutations and the birth defects.
The problem, Adam was made pre-send of God, genetically per Eve, also, actually, technically, Adam was married to his rib, right? That's a really close relative. You can't get closer.
Than that. I never heard that statement before. Right, so you can't get closer than that. And.
Actually, it wasn't until the time of Moses, I think as you hinted at a while ago in the book of Leviticus, 2 ,500 years after creation, did God step in and say, that brought the curse and mutation started, they started to throughout 2 ,000 years, they got to a bad point, they're accumulating so much, don't marry a close relative anymore.
Makes really good sense, biblically and genetically, if we just start with God's word. But as I said before, though,.
The marrying a first cousin was never a prohibition in the word of God, and every other kind of familial, inter-family sexual relation is an abomination, but something as distant, which is still fairly close, starting with the first cousin and anything beyond that, is still legal in the eyes of God.
In fact, you have people for centuries in royalty that married their cousins and so on. I know people today, actually, believe it or not, that have married their first cousins. I only know a few, and there are even states, I don't know if it's changed, but there are even states in America that do not prohibit that.
Daniel Creech. Yeah, and so, I mean, you got that, you're very right on that, and of course, we've got the biblical standard of understanding the history, and so often is, is we try to take today's world and squeeze the Bible, and using the Bible to understand the word of God as our foundation, and use that as a lens to properly understand the world we're looking at, including the past that we can't observe directly.
So, God's word should be our foundation for all things.
Well, thank you, Daniel. In San Jose, California, you are also getting a free copy of Quick Answers to Tough Questions by our guest Brian Osborne and his co-author Bodie Hodge. Please make sure we have your full mailing address in San Jose, California.
We're going to a break right now, it's going to be a little bit longer, it's our midway break, and as we always do, we have to accommodate Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida by taking a longer break in between our two-hour segments.
So, please send in your emails now. If you'd like to get online and have your question asked and answered, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages with more of Brian Osborne and Quick Answers to Tough Questions.
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For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.
We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.
That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either. We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.
If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship. You can call us at 508 -528 -5750. That's 508 -528 -5750. Or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our TV program entitled, Resting in Grace.
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Church and see all that a church can be. Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402. Or visit lindbrookbaptist .org. That's lindbrookbaptist .org. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am .com.
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Because everyone needs a pastor. And Pastor Bill Shishko, the host of A Visit to the Pastor's Study, is going to be my next Iron Sharpens Iron Pastor's Luncheon keynote speaker. That is Thursday, October 26th from 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall.
And also speaking at this event is Pennsylvania State Representative Stephen Bloom, who is also a candidate for Congress. And if you are a pastor, a deacon, an elder, which in my understanding of church polity, an elder and a pastor are the same office, but I know that some of you differentiate the two.
But if you're a church leader of any kind or a parachurch leader of any kind, you are welcome to attend this free pastor's luncheon October 26th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And not only are you going to be fed physically with delicious food by our friends at Firehouse Subs, who are catering this event at no charge to our Iron Sharpens Iron budget here, but you are also going to be fed spiritually by the speakers, and you're also going to leave the event with a sack filled with perhaps as many as a couple of dozen brand new Christian books donated by the major Christian publishers all over the United States and in the United Kingdom, with very few exceptions.
The most memorable names in Christian publishing, typically every year, give us a book of my choosing for every pastor that attends. So you will be having quite a number of free gifts that you'll be leaving with.
This is all free of charge, and nothing is sold there at the event. That is a rule that my wife, my late wife, came up with many years ago. This is her brainchild, and the reason we started the pastor's luncheon is because my precious late wife realized that I had many friends in the ministry due to my work in Christian radio, and she said that instead of exchanging Christmas gifts, we should start a tradition where we treat my pastor friends to lunch.
And this grew into a huge event with sometimes over 100 people attending, which required corporate sponsorship and so on. And this has been going on since the 90s, this event, and I relaunched it after moving here from New York to Pennsylvania.
And so there's no ulterior motive. We're not selling you Amway products or some kind of pyramid scheme. You are merely going to be there as a gift from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to hear God's Word taught by a really gifted Brethren in Christ, Bill Shishko of Reformation Metro New York and host of the Visit to the Pastor study, and to eat well and to receive all these free books and CDs and DVDs that we will be giving you.
Please email me if you'd like to attend at chrisarnson at gmail .com. This is for men only, by the way, men in ministry leadership. And you don't have to be specifically a pastor, but a man in ministry leadership.
Please email me at chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line and let me know if you would like to register for that. And that is, as I said, Thursday, October 26th from 11 a .m. to 2 p .m.
Coming up before that, we have the Gospel of the Reformation, a 500th anniversary celebration being conducted by the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, in cooperation with Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship.
The keynote speaker is my very good friend, Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, who is their professor of apologetics and Islam. That's going to be held Friday, September 29th, and Saturday, September 30th at the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island.
If you would like more information on that event, which is free of charge, go to wotchurch .com, W-O-T, which stands for word of truth, church .com, wotchurch .com, or call, I should say, 631 -806 -0614.
631 -806 -0614. The very next day, Sunday, October 1st at 11 a .m., the aforementioned Dr. Tony Costa from Toronto Baptist Seminary will also be speaking at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, Long Island, New York.
If you'd like to attend that Sunday morning worship service, go to hopereformedli .net for more details, hopereformedli, for longisland .net, hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711. 631 -696 -5711.
After that, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their annual Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. That's November 17th through the 18th on the theme for Still Our Ancient Foe, a reference to Satan in that classic Reformation hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty Fortress.
The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant. If you'd like to register, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reformed Theology.
Then, coming up in January from the 17th through the 20th, the G3 Conference returns to Atlanta, Georgia, the G3 standing for Grace, Gospel, and Glory. And this coming January, the theme is Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship.
The 17th of January will be exclusively a Spanish-speaking edition of the conference, and from the 18th through the 20th is exclusively an English-speaking edition of the conference, featuring Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .P. Charles Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askell, Anthony Methenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.
If you'd like to register, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com, and please make sure you tell all of these organizations having these events that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.
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Well now we are back to our discussion with our guest Brian Osborne. We are discussing his book Quick Answers to Tough Questions and let me go to another questioner in our audience. Let's see, we have David in Ada, Ohio and I have to enlarge David's question because the font is very small.
So here we go, we're enlarging the font and the question is, I have been wondering if Adam and Eve could have conceived a child while in the Garden of Eden. If so, that child would not have inherited the sin nature.
Correct me if I'm wrong. That said, after Eve was given to Adam, how long did it take for the fall? Considering the union of one man to one woman and once she was given to Adam, they must have consummated the marriage the same day.
If so, the fall must have happened the same day shortly after Eve was given to Adam. Otherwise, a child could have been conceived in the Garden of Eden. If that happened, that child wouldn't have, and I think he's repeating himself here, that child wouldn't have the sinful nature.
The fall of Satan and the fall of man must have happened in a short period of time, i .e. the same day, to prevent a child being conceived without the sin nature. Just wondering what your thoughts are.
In other words, he's saying that he doesn't seem to think that there was anything that would prevent procreation to begin before the fall, but according to God's orchestrated purpose, it did only occur after the fall.
But if you can have your own comments.
On his questions. Sure, yeah, no, good question. It's an interesting question. It's one we have to kind of use a biblical lens, try to make a good guess about. There's no explicit teaching per se. As we do know that Adam and Eve were commanded to fill the earth, so it implies procreation.
It makes sense that the fall of Satan about, he makes a really good argument that most likely you can put the fall of Satan probably within a couple, you know, the logic presented is that, you know, God looked down on Asia and called a fallen angel perfect.
He rested in St. Paul sometime shortly thereafter, and then he tempts Eve. She falls away, man sins. It would seem that would be within a couple weeks after day seven. Why? Because God had given them the command to fill the earth, and given that they had perfect bodies, pregnancy should not have been that hard.
So most likely, a whole female cycle taking place, so she could have a child. And so the suggestion is based on that, just a biblical educated guess, it'll seem to imply the man fallen within a couple weeks after.
That would not be dogmatic on that. It does seem to make just a nugget to chew on. Now this whole issue of the.
Time frames he's speaking at, a lot of this is mystery, isn't it? It is. I mean, you know, we say.
Often at the ministry, we are dogmatic about what the Bible is dogmatic about. When the Bible is not explicit, we are not explicit. We can make some good biblical educated guesses, but we recognize that's what they are.
Always, always, God's Word is our foundation, and we base all our thinking.
From there. Yes, and I'm assuming when David says, I've been wondering if Adam and Eve could have conceived a child while in the Garden of Eden, I'm assuming he is meaning by that, not that they may have actually conceived a child, but that it was physically possible, and there was no reason why, I mean, other than God's orchestration.
His divine plan was obviously that they did not conceive while in the Garden before the fall, but it was, we have no reason to believe they weren't physically capable of doing that. Yeah, sure thing, good clarification.
All right, well thank you David, and thanks for giving us your full mailing address in Ada, Ohio, because you have also won a free copy of Quick Answers to Tough Questions by our guest Brian Osborne and his co-author Bodie Hodge, so keep your eye open for that to arrive in the mail from cvbbs .com, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for BibleBookService .com.
We want to thank very much Master Books and New Leaf Publishing for providing us with these free copies of Quick Answers to Tough Questions for our listeners submitting questions today, at least a limited number of them, and we want to thank them for being so loyal and faithful to Iron Trip and Zion Radio for frequently giving us books that they publish, and we have authored, we have interviewed, I should say, many authors from Master Books and New Leaf Publishing, so we are so delighted to be cooperating with them in kingdom work.
We have, let's see, Sterling Vanderwerker, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Good Shepherd Fellowship in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Hey, look at that, Tar Heel!
Go whatever you are.
He can't be a Duke fan.
What is the most difficult question that you answer in your book from your perspective?
Uh, let's see, the most difficult question probably is dealing with matric dating. We just kind of, to summarize that in 500 words or less, it can be tough, but I think we got the job done, which I was really excited about.
Just for your listeners so they know, what we did in the book was we tried, we did answer every one of these questions in 500 words or less, which is basically two short pages, the book done by Master Books, New Leaf Publishing, very visual, a lot of great pictures, less than 500 words, that way you can come to the book and get a nice, concise answer about carbon -14 dating, or radiometric dating, or about the age of the earth, or why, what a king get his wife, all, we have 33 questions answered in 500 words or less, and so the tough part is making it concise at times, so things that are more technical, like radiometric dating, can be a little tougher, but we did a good job of breaking it down to the fundamental assumptions that drive the raw conclusions when involving things like radiometric dating, or distant starlight, or whatever, and so that's why I tell this one from that angle.
The biggest question that people struggle with as Christians, from what I found, is the issue of the age of the earth. We're reading God's Word, and as soon as I start talking about the age of the earth, as the Bible clearly implies, is around 6 ,000.
Now you're getting kind of crazy on me, and so for me... Well, thank you, Pastor.
Sterling. Please make sure that we have your full mailing address in Greensboro, North Carolina, because you have won our final copy of Quick Answers to Tough Questions by Brian Osborne and Bodie Hodge.
Thank you so much for participating in the program today with an excellent question. Keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in North Carolina and beyond. We have Joe in Slovenia, who says, Please ask Brother Brian to address the issue of the size of the ark and any reliably verifiable remains, since it was so large and most likely would have been around for a long time after the flood recorded.
Are there any extra biblical accounts that describe its location that corroborate the Bible account to locate its resting place? Are any of the occasional claims of its remains having been found verifiable?
Thank you for a great show and encouraging discussion. That's an interesting question, because I asked the same question, or nearly the same question, to one of your colleagues at Answers in Genesis, and he does not believe that there is anything that would be believable in regard to archaeological evidence involving the remains of the ark, but I don't know if you have a different answer to that.
I'm glad you told me what he says, so I can be sure I'm in line with it. That's good. Appreciate your ministry, brother. We had that line for a couple different reasons, I'm sure you probably expressed, but we recognize, of course, in the Bible.
Where the ark landed, was it actually formed at the end of the flood, and maybe even volcanic? Taking the size of the ark, the ark encounter, yet or not?
Not yet, but I'd love to.
Oh, brother, if you get a chance, it's so worth coming. I mean, it's incredibly, you walk up to the listeners on Answers in Genesis, it's the parent ministry for the ark and so forth. If you go to the ark encounter, and you see the size of this life-size replica of the ark, I mean, it just blows you away.
And then, of course, you look inside, three different levels, over 100 ,000 square feet, I mean, you get tired walking around, and inside we're answering popular questions, like I was being asked right now, but we recognize the ship was, and then you think about after the flood world kind of taking place, that's going to make it hard for a wooden vessel to last, even after it landed, some lands may be still a bit, or some post-flood landslides, or whatever may be going on.
Maybe those projects, if we think about it, the ark lands, they start to multiply, but initially, where would you go to get lumber for some of that wood just sitting there? And maybe for many generations, multiple peoples went to the ark and used that wood for a billion different things, different projects.
Can't be dogmatic on that, it wouldn't make sense, though. And then all the finds that people say, when they come to, well, we think we found the ark, we almost found it, or we saw it, but it's not a good picture, that they found remnants of it.
Now, we would not say that that would be impossible, it is plausible, that the remnants, not accusations, but what people say, they found it great, but that's not panned out yet, and for many reasons, most likely the wood has either deteriorated, all those things would make it believable, yes, but doubtful.
Yeah, I remember I was captivated as a young Catholic boy before I converted to biblical Christianity, but I was captivated by a book called Noah's Ark, I Touched It. I don't know if you recall that or have heard of that book.
I remember the author's name was Thor, could it have been Thor Hiredall, I'm not sure, but I remember that being very compelling to me, but then later hearing that that was most likely not an actual find of the ark.
Um, and of course, we know that the Lord and his providence has kept a lot of these things from discovery, because look what happens with the folks like in the Roman Catholic Church, who have turned things into idols, things that were, most of which are not likely even actual, genuine archaeological discoveries.
Yeah, no, you're exactly right.
In fact, I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was Martin Luther, but I think it was Martin Luther, but someone from that era had said that after discovering all of the carnival-like charlatanry going on in Rome at the time where idols and relics were being sold, he said that if you took all of the splinters from the actual cross of Christ that were being sold, if you assembled them together, you would have enough wood to actually build the ark.
Yeah. And I'm going to read a question to you from Jenny from Ben Salem, Pennsylvania, and then I'll have you answer it when you return. She actually has two, she has two questions, and they're both very good.
I'll ask the first one. When speaking with non-believers, the age of people in Genesis, living lives close to 1 ,000 years of age, is often mocked. What is the best explanation that I can offer of why they lived so long prior to the flood?
And you can answer that, as I said, when we return. This is our final break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Brian Osborne, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old USA. Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages with Brian Osborne and more quick answers to tough questions.
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Find Harvey Cedars on Facebook or at hcbible .org. Hcbible .org. Call 609 -494 -5689. 609 -494 -5689. Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, this is the last 25 minutes of our interview with Brian Osborne, blogger, speaker, and author for Answers in Genesis, and curriculum writer and teacher for Answers Bible Curriculum.
And if you'd like to join us on the air, do so quickly because we're running out of time and there are already a couple of people in front of you. So please send an email to ChrisArnsen at gmail .com.
ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. And before I have you give your answer to Jenny from Ben Salem, Pennsylvania, why don't you let our listeners know something about the Answers.
Bible Curriculum? Yeah, no, absolutely. So the Answers Bible Curriculum, that is our Sunday school curriculum, can also be used as a homeschooling curriculum, but it is just an amazing tool to teach the Word of God in our day and age.
The way it's done, it's a four-year, and as we go through that chronology, we're doing apologetics, we're showing the Gospel all the way through, pulling out how God has a goal He's accomplishing through all of history.
It's all about His story, what He is doing, seeing the Gospel thread pre-case through a content, but same general information, and this is equipping each of them in the fear and the admonition of the Lord.
And so when you go through the Bible chronologically, and the events, the major events in there about the Gospel from beginning to end, and then you start to see how it all comes together. Christians of all ages, not just kids, but Christians of all ages, to know what they believe, why they believe it, and to be able to give a reason for the Gospel.
There's really nothing else like it on the market. It does everything that it does in that one curriculum, and it's amazingly powerful today.
Well, let's go to that question from Jenny. When speaking with non-believers, the age of people in Genesis living lives close to a thousand years of age is often mocked. What is the best explanation that I can offer of why they live so long prior to the Flood?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
If you come from a biblical perspective, it's a really good answer, though. It's interesting. If you look at the timeline and trace the length of people's lives in the Bible, they live up to around 900 years on average.
And then after the Flood, people are living for much shorter periods of time. It goes from just 100 years of age. So something happened at the time of the Flood to change why people used to live so long.
Beforehand, they lived longer. Now, not so long. So what happened at the Flood to make such a difference? The Bible says in Genesis 6, 13, that God told Noah his goal with the Flood was to destroy the people pre-Flood.
And then also at the time of the Flood, you have a genetic bottleneck taking place, reducing the human population just to eight people, animals just the two of each kind. And so that genetic bottleneck accumulates in order of life.
So a certain lifespan. Okay. And her second question is,.
Another source of mocking from non-believers is that Adam and Eve cannot possibly be the first parents of humans because of the great diversity of skin, hair, and eye colors, among other diverse attributes of humans, and that, in fact, there must have been many Adams and Eves to account for that diversity.
What is the simplest answer I can provide?
Simplest answer? I will start with God's Word. Let me get a pretty straightforward answer. Before we get to that, though, good question, Jenny, by the way. Let me just say this. It's kind of ironic that you would hear that because even secular scientists right now would argue that you can trace all females to a common female ancestor using the Y chromosome to roughly around just six humans and not chimps.
I'm sorry, not Y chromosomes, the mitochondrial DNA for the female. You can trace it in the males in the Y chromosome to a common male ancestor who lived probably at the time of the mitochondrial Eve.
So even by secular estimations, the people we see today came from before that, but it's interesting to note that. But to get the variations, all you need is the information originally implanted into the original couple, which would have been by God, and then you need some mechanism to later on create isolated genetic pools within humanity where certain traits would become dominant and take over.
Well, what if it happened at the 100 years after the Flood? Tower of Babel, because of man's disobedience, he confuses their languages and spreads them out all over the world. And now you get isolated people groups.
They're isolated by, number one, language barriers. You will marry someone who's skin, no plane, and genetically, it's not hard to do if we just start from a biblical perspective. And just a little side note, talking about this issue, all the people groups around the world with all these different colors of skin, but let's clarify.
See, actually, every person based on a pigment called melanin, some people have more, some people have less, we all have different shades, but all the same, different people groups in this isolated gene pools, certain tones of skin will do better in different environments for various reasons and take over the population.
And biologically. Yeah, that was an excellent point about us actually being all the same color, but different shades. Excellent point. Well, guess what, Jenny? I ran out of books before, but we were speaking about chronology before, and I noticed that you are actually chronologically the first person that sent in a question today, and I somehow missed that.
So what I'm going to do is I am going to trust in the fact that Master Books is going to provide us with more of these books when we have, God willing, Brian Osborne back on the show. That'd be great.
So I'm going to give Jenny my copy of Quick Answers to Tough Questions by Brian Osborne and Bodie Hodge, and this is definitely now the last copy that we have. So we thank you for the excellent two questions.
And by the way, we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who said that Noah's Ark, I touched it, was written by Fernand Navarro. Well, thank you very much for that, CJ. I don't know why I thought Thor Heyerdahl, but he was, I think, an explorer, wasn't he?
That name just seems to be synonymous with somebody that was a mountain climber and all that. We have, let's see, we have a couple more folks here who have written in their questions, and we have Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York.
Is it true that atheists, in reality, just worship and serve themselves in which mistakes, oh, I'm sorry, in which makes them.
Their own god? I think if you really kind of break it down at a foundational level, I mentioned this earlier, Chris, you know, either we approach life from one of two perspectives, either we submit to God's word, we bow the knee to his authority, we do life his way, which I think his thoughts, reject the Bible, and the only other option is man's word becomes the ultimate authority.
And at that point, which word of man do you go with? Well, as a person, you listen to different people, you weigh their opinions in the scales of your own mind, and then you decide which one you think is best, and that's the one you adopt.
So in a real sense, you've become the judge and the jury. So in a real sense, you have indeed become your own god. You've determined this is the standard of goodness, or morality, or the life you want to live based on your understanding of all the things that you look at.
And so, I mean, yeah, at a foundational level, that's what's happening. It wouldn't be just atheists, though, it's just any non-believer. It was rejected the true revelation of Jesus Christ through the word of God and have adopted some other view of reality based on man's word as a foundation for that thinking, in a sense, they've deemed themselves in the seat of God.
So, and that's what we all do as sinners until we repent of our sins and confess Christ as Lord.
Thank you, Tyler. And we have Jeff in Clinton Township, Michigan, who says, if a literal six, 24 hour day creation account is true, and how come those who teach otherwise aren't considered heretical? Why is the subject of biblical creation considered a secondary issue?
Charlie Liebert the other day mentioned that there are three creation views that are acceptable. Why are they? This makes defending the reliability of the scriptures difficult, doesn't it? Well, yeah, obviously you're going to have Christians who have different levels of importance that they place on things.
You're not going to have unanimity completely in the body of Christ on how serious one person takes an issue over another. Like for instance, I know a friend of mine, the late Dr. Bob Cameron, now in heaven.
He was a very, very conservative African American pastor. And he took issues very seriously on matters like these. And he was very outraged that the denomination he was in, one of the denominations he was in, not the last one, but one of the earlier denominations that he was in, was ordaining men into the ministry that believed in an old earth.
And he was very upset by that. But I have friends that are my brothers in Christ, even some who I've interviewed on this program, who are brilliant, and who have a lot to offer the body of Christ, but I disagree with them on this.
So where are you on this? Is this something that is damnable, in your opinion? Is it just seriously flawed, but we can still accept somebody.
As our brother? Where do you land on that? Yeah, typically when we're asked this question, we get asked it in a different way. It kind of comes about more like this. Are you guys telling me that if I don't believe, someone doesn't, that they can't be saved?
We oftenly joke, if you read Romans 10, 9, it says, confess your mouth to the Lord Jesus, believe in how God's raised from the dead, not what the text says, by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, plus nothing.
So it's not a direct salvation issue, but it is indirectly a salvation issue. That's what I think the gentleman's getting at, is that basically, if we can't trust the Bible's clear teaching about creation, then why should we trust what it says about the resurrection of Christ and salvation?
And make no mistake, the Bible is 24 hour days. Exodus 20, 11, 4 and 6 days, the Lord made heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and all that is in them. Jesus in Matthew 19, 4 and 5, in the beginning, God made them male and female.
Every single biblical author refers to Genesis as real history. So does Jesus himself. The Bible's clear on this. And so, if we then say, well, the Bible's clear on this, but that can't be what it really means, we're saying that God's Word is fallible, that it is not inerrant, we've undermined the authority of God's Word.
And so, yes, it is a huge issue. And I think many Christians aren't fighting over it, they're not trying to defend it, because they haven't recognized this is an attack on God's Word. For many Christians that grew up, and it wasn't an issue for them, for multiple recent generations, this is where the attack is happening.
That's one of the primary reasons two-thirds are walking away from the faith. And so we do need to be like the sons of God, we need to do to defend the faith. Go ahead.
I was just going to ask you, how much difference have you found amongst young earth creationists, such as yourself, you know, you're in the same camp, you're in agreement that the earth is young, how much difference have you had, and debate and so on, have you discovered amongst those that are that like-minded?
Just those within young earth creationists, I mean, there are many different views of God's Word. So, for example, if you look at the flood, Genesis 7, the flood of the great deep burst forth, and the flood into heaven, or a train of water in person, how exactly did that go down?
How exactly, what was the mechanism geologically that drove all of that? And what were the geological reactions as a result of all the tectonic activity? And so, when we try to make good guesses about that, we create a model, but those models can't change over time.
God's Word does not. The flood of the great deep burst forth, absolutely true. Now, what that exactly looks like, we're doing our best to understand that. And so, within global flood, flood of the great deep burst forth.
So, you'll find some variation there and in other places as well, but they're over more of those.
Yeah, and I'm wondering if you would have found, I'm sure you have, differences of opinion on the Nephilim and...
Oh, sure.
And things like that, whether or not they were angelic beings or, you know, all these kinds of things, because there is disagreement on whether an angelic being could possibly procreate and things like that, that are, seem to be a mystery availed over them.
Yeah, no, you're exactly right. Even as a ministry, we, when we talk about that particular issue, we give kind of, so yeah, there are a lot of different views, a lot of people, different venues, the museum or the Ark Counter or the writers or whatever.
And we're all here under the banner of biblical authority and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Non-denominational, then there are a lot of different denominations within them. Wonderful, different denominational backgrounds, united under the banner of the gospel of biblical authority, to stand on God's Word, defend it, and proclaim the truth of how we're saved through Christ alone.
And so, there are denominational differences among us. We can stand on the authority of God, claim the gospel. We can do that united as we stand on God's Word. Such an awesome thing to be a part of here at the ministry.
Do you have a personal, definitive opinion on the Nephilim yourself?
I do not, actually. As of this point, I'm a little bit in flux. I've probably taken a little bit of each view here lately. I've kind of, I mean, over the years, I've kind of oscillated to Sons of Seth.
That was an interesting take, and I thought I had a lot of persuasive power to it. That's on the website. This is .org, and look at the most recent article on the Nephilim, he does a really good job there.
Again, you know, I think you can, I think you can genuinely look at that from different angles, and so we can there.
Now, Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say.
Well, I just wondered, I don't know, do we have any more? I don't want to get in the way of anybody else's questions.
Go ahead, just go ahead.
I just wanted to hear a few words. You know, you gave the six-point outline of his book, and we didn't really go through, and I was just wondering if you could say a few words about those, just so we know what they're about.
Yeah. Yeah, sure, if I may, that'd be great. Yeah, so the general outline of the book is, we have the introduction, which tells why it's important, why it's a biblical authority issue, and that's a gospel issue indirectly.
The perfect creation is dealing with questions of death and suffering. It comes from, why do we see all this pain and suffering in this world? Other issues, it wasn't really a six-day creation, why do we believe that?
And then we get to the corrupt creation, when man sinned, bringing death and suffering, the consequences of that, and talk about those sorts of issues. The catastrophically flooded creation gets at issues like the rock layers and the fossils, were there dinosaurs on Noah's Ark, and stuff like that.
Also, with those we're talking about, if I may, a little bit of a ramble, but I want to give you a chance to, the reason we cannot squeeze millions of years into the Bible, because no matter how you do it, whether it's the day-age theory or the gap theory, no matter how you try to squeeze it into the Bible, you're putting death before sin.
Because if you suppose that evidence for those millions of years are the rock layers, and in those rock layers we find evidence of things being dead and killed and bloodshed and disease. If you've got millions of years, you've got death before sin.
If you've got death before sin, then death would not be the payment for sin, like the Bible clearly teaches. And if death is not the payment for sin, then Jesus' death does not pay. In those earlier chapters about why this is so important, why we can't have death before sin, and why we take a stand on this.
And then we get to the Confused Creation, Tower of Babel, One Blood, One Race. And then the Evolutionary Takeover is kind of looking at how present-day evidence of the Federation, how do we use all these answers to share the gospel?
Because as I mentioned to you guys already, and it's my heartbeat, it's our heartbeat as a ministry, what we want to do is equip Christians of all ages to give answers, to defend their faith, so they can share the answer to Jesus.
That is what, so we answer their questions in order to make a beeline for the gospel that God would use to change their heart, and that will change their thinking. You can't change someone's thinking to change their heart, but if God changes their heart, that'll change their thinking.
And going back to the.
Death-before-the-fall issue, the Old Earth folks would say again that Jesus Christ did not die as a Redeemer for animals, so therefore they will say that the only death that did not occur before the fall, nor was it possible to occur, involved humans.
And even those that would go as far as being believers that men evolved from lower life forms, they would say that that only would include the first human that came out of that evolution, but it did not involve animal death.
So how do.
We respond to that kind of logic? Yeah, well, I mean, people, when they make those sort of claims, they really are playing hermeneutical gymnastics. They are bending over backwards to try to reinterpret a text.
The clarifications of the text, like Romans 8 .22, by that original sin, including animals and plants and the universe, all of Christ's passage, the way it was as a picture of Christ, but also related to just the consequence of death being the payment for sin, the consummation issues, when Christ comes back, returns creation back to the perfect, to more death before sin, even after he comes back to have all that bloodshed.
And then you got issues like, if that's the case, then God would have looked down on day six, after millions of years of death and suffering, and called all that death and suffering and bloodshed. If he made creation, and death was full of all this disease over millions of years, and killings were laid down rapidly during a global flood, but if millions of years is true, then the flood could not have been global, but it's just been a local event.
You've got to reinterpret that. And then, creatively, if we all do not, if we're not all related to Adam, then not everyone can be saved, because only descendants of Adam can be saved through the last Adam, Jesus Christ, who became part of our blood, our relative, to pay our debt.
If we're related, then not everyone can be saved. That's a huge gospel issue. And there are more. People go to our website and find so much more information on this, why this is so important, even at a deeper theological, exegetical level, so I get to dive deeper into the text and parse it out.
We undermine God's Word, especially at the beginning with a foundational history in Genesis.
We have time for one more quick question. B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania says, I swear I'm not making this up, but have you ever heard the theory that Cain and his descendants came from a sexual union between Eve and Satan?
You know what? I'm not sure I've heard that one.
Okay.
Wow. I can add it to the list. That's a new one. That's good. I'll get new questions very often. I appreciate that new question.
I actually have heard of that. There was some television evangelist who was known for being a racist who died not long ago. I'm not saying that this theory is only exclusively for racists, but I have heard of it.
And I think Two Seed in the Spirit predestinarians, it's a very small group of people, have claimed that view. But anyway, we are out of time, and we want to make sure that our listeners have all of the contact information.
First of all, Answers in Genesis website is answersingenesis .org, answersingenesis .org. And you can also find the Answers curriculum at that same website. And of course, let's not forget our friends at New Leaf Publishing Group and Masters Books, which is part of the same publishing ministry.
Their website is nlpg .com. N-L for New Leaf, P-G for publishinggroup .com. Do you have any other contact information that you care to give? Well, I'll just say you said the website,.
Answersingenesis .org. That's great. They can get the book at Amazon or they're from New Leaf Publishing or Master Books. But yeah, just using those resources, get the book, get equipped. Chris, honestly, I made this book, me and Buddy worked together to make this book one of the most practical, useful tools a Christian can grab, quickly read, and be ready to defend their faith and effectively proclaim the gospel.
Because that's why it's named Quick Answers to Questions, so the busy mom or dad or the kids who are doing sports and whatnot can sit down, read these quick answers, and be equipped to defend the faith and proclaim the gospel.
And the Master Books division also has their own website, masterbooks .com. And of course, you could always get books mentioned on Iron Trip and Zion Radio from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, our sponsor, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com.
If you could hold on, Brian, I would love to schedule you for another interview. And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took time to write in questions. Oh, by the way, Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania, our friend, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker of Greensboro, North Carolina, said that, I already have this book in my library so Jenny can have my copy.
That surely makes me feel a lot better. Well, anyway, thank you very much for your generosity, Pastor Sterling. And I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.