G1 Conference Session 1: Dr. Dan Biddle "Why Creation Apologetics are Important"

Why Creation Apologetics Matter as the Foundation of the Gospel

Thank you again for coming tonight. Tonight we're going to be covering one topic that is very, very near and dear to my heart about why are creation apologetics important. And I want to look at Genesis as the foundation of the gospel.

And I want to start out by making a very bold statement, which is this, a Christian's faith and their eternal effectiveness will only be maximized if they fully believe in the history of the Bible and are empowered by the Holy Spirit.

It's my opinion that you really need to have both of those things if you want to live a fully empowered, fully effective Christian life. Because if you don't believe in the historicity of the Bible, you're going to be carrying a lot of cognitive dissonance in your mind and your heart's not going to want to go out and evangelize to people because your head is like an anchor, not believing in the truths of God's word.

And secondly, if you're not filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, you won't be there and present and ready to be used. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship prepared to do good works, which he's prepared in advance for us to do.

Only way we're going to run into those situations, I believe, is that if we're paying attention, we're listening and we're directed by the power of the Holy Spirit. So here's what students are up against today, at least in the state of California, and it's going to be similar in other states, is in the state of California, between sixth and 10th grade, there is a barrage that happens with students where they're given about 50 hours, 50 classroom hours of instruction on evolution that spans over 250 pages of evolution.

The Parable of the Sower and the Four Soils

Teaching.

They have Lucy and other human evolutionary icons in sixth grade world history. They've got about 90 pages of evolution and life science, which is usually in seventh.

Grade.

And they have biology, which is typically about 150 pages or about 15 of their biological text is usually on evolution. So this is what Christians are up against today, and it's having a significant impact in the faith of our Christian students.

Millennials today want to know, how many pages do I have to turn in the Bible before I run into truth? Truth that I can understand, the truth that's not allegorized or mythology. They want to know, if the truth doesn't begin on page one, how many more pages do I have to flip before I'm going to run into truth?

We believe that truth starts on page one. I want to look here at a scripture passage called the parable of the sower, where Jesus is giving this analogy and he's talking about the seed, which is God's word or the kingdom.

Of God.

And he talks about these four different conditions in which the seed goes out. So the DNA of the seed has a potential to grow and it's going to grow, but it falls in these different types of soil conditions that are going to result in growth or not.

There's birds by the wayside that can come and eat up the seed. There's a stony soil, thorns, and then there's fertile soil. So we'll watch a short video here that will explain an overview of this parable.

The parable of the sower. Behold, the sower went out to sow. As he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil.

And after the sun had risen, it was scorched. And because it had no root, other seed fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. Other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they yielded a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.

So to summarize, we have four different types of soil situations for the seed. The first is where it says that Jesus says the devil is going to come and take away the word that would have otherwise been planted in their hearts and their minds that would have grown up into productive action.

So that's one thing that can happen is the devil can come and take away the word. The next situation is the seeds have no root. They take place in believers that believe for a while, but then they fall away.

The next one is when the seed is choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. And then of course is what we want, which is the good soil, where they're going to return thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold what's planted in them.

So if you break these down, the first one where the devil comes and takes away the word can be parallel to someone that just has disbelief. They come out of tribulation or persecution because of the word, and they said, you know what, it just must not be true anyhow.

The next one can be doubt. If they have no root and it's not taking place, they start believing God's word, then it hits a rock and they can't believe it anymore. That would be like doubt. Choked with cares, riches, and pleasures are analogous to when people are distracted by.

The world.

So the seed of God's word will not grow. Then of course there's a good ground. We want to focus on these top two, the disbelief and the doubt. This is where creation apologetics can really shine because they can help people understand that God's word is true from the start.

They don't have to doubt it. And then their roots can grow deeply. Those seeds will be secured and then fruitful trees. So Jesus is talking here and he says, because the seed had no root, it withered away.

And he's talking, it says that some fell along stony places where they did not have much.

Earth.

And they immediately sprang up. We have a lot of quick believers here. So sometimes it happened because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up and they were scorched and because they had no root, they withered.

Away.

He goes on and says, but he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself. He endures for a while, but when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.

And we've been doing this ministry for a while. I can't tell you the number of parents that have come up to us and said, I raised my kid in church. They went to one youth group and they went away to their first semester of college at a secular school and their comeback now for Christmas as a self-reported atheist.

It happens quite a lot and it's because of this tribulation that happens and the doubt and the disbelief that can foster into a faith that just does not stick. So tribulation means a pressing, a pressing together or pressure or oppression, affliction, tribulation, distress, and straits.

So in order to get a college degree nowadays, you're required to go through at least seven different specific courses that they regard as core coursework, things like geology and philosophy and other classes like this, where this student is going to get inundated and bombarded with evolutionary thought.

They need to be prepared for that. And persecution is to put the fighter to drive away. So a lot of these seeds that are planted in the minds and hearts of students today are going to come under this type of pressure.

Here's an example of what type of persecution we can get all the way from when they're kids listening to programs like that shown on the screen or the crudes of these movies. I was on a plane once and the person to my left was watching the war of the planet of the apes.

The person to my right was watching the movie about Lucy that's all about, it's based on how we only supposedly use 10 of our brain, which is another myth. And so here are just two people right on a plane watching these movies being steeped in movies that were overtone with evolutionary thought.

So and of course, there's a 250 pages of evolution teaching that they're going to get in school. So these students nowadays are under a lot of pressure, a lot of tribulation. And here the word says, but the ones on the rock are like those who when they hear, receive their word with joy, but they have no root who believe for a while.

And in time of temptation or testing, they fall away. We want God's word to grow deeply in people. We think that it has to go down all the way down to Genesis. If they're not believing Genesis one to 11, it's real history.

Their roots are going to start going down and then they're going to hit rocks of all. What about the science and Bible? What about Charles Darwin? What about deep time? What about ape to human evolution?

A lot of Christians today, their faith tentacles are starting to go down in the root system in the soil, but they're bumping into rocks and they're stopping. And if the roots don't go down, the tree will not fruit or it will only have a little bit.

Of fruit.

We believe that a strong root system requires a thorough, deep belief and understanding of Genesis one to 11 as real history. What happened to me when I was a teenager and going through my young twenties, I did believe in the Bible.

I would say it was a spirit filled Christian. I love Christ, love this word. I was just undeclared on the origins idea. I didn't know any better. And then later in life, when I came to understand that the Genesis account was real history, I had to go back and build these kinds of things.

These root structures called stilt roots. This is a particular species of palm tree that grows up and when it's in this different type of area, it's got to have stronger roots. So these roots come down after the fact and make the tree strong.

That's exactly what I had to do in my life. I had to go back and regrow some deeper roots that I would have stronger faith. We don't want to be like this tree that did not have a taproot that hits the nearest storm, didn't have deep soil, is able to just fall right over.

We want to have wide roots and we also want to have a taproot. A taproot is one that goes down deep so that when you hit the winds and the tides of life, you're still going to stand strong. Psalms 1 says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law, or the word could be Torah there, which is the first five chapters of the Bible, including Genesis.

He meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in season, whose leaf also shall not wither and whatever he does shall prosper. That is a promise from God's word that if we study and meditate and believe in revering God's word, our root tentacles will go down deep and we will not fail to bear our fruit.

In season.

Even when we go buy a dog, you can go get a dog and based upon how much you're going to pay and what kind of a breed you're going to get, you can get a certificate of pedigree. A lot of the students that attend our seminars that haven't been raised with the biblical worldview, they don't, they're walking around without any pedigree.

They have no identity in Christ or back to Adam, or they don't understand the human plan, the human history that goes back to the time of Adam. They're untethered in the universe and ungrounded many times and they're seeking identity in all types of worldly outlets because they don't have paper.

They don't have pedigree that anchors them into the biblical account. A friend of mine, her name is Taylor. She flipped into a creationist when she was about 17 years old. She had before been believing all the stuff about evolution.

She was an AP biology and psychology and she had, was steeped in evolutionary worldview. And then she ran into the flood account and we talked with her more and more and she converted and flipped to creationist.

She would say it was like being born again, again. She then took a 17 foot page long Wayne's coding. It was a big wall poster that she around, she was surrounded in her dorm room that has the whole history from Adam going all the way back up to present time.

And she says, I feel so much more stable in my life now knowing where my life fits in a context of history. So we want people to have a pedigree in God's word, a pedigree in our history, understanding where our role is in this place, which is ultimately to have a produced glory for God.

I was at a museum once, the Royal Terrell Museum up in Canada. It's the biggest dinosaur museum in the world. My daughter and I were there and we got to witness this mom with about a 10 year old son staring into a museum display that kind of had a goo to the zoo, to me and you icon exhibit that had the whole start of beginning of creation and the pond scum stuff that led to these things, led to these things all the way up to humans.

And you could see the young man, this 10, this 10 year old young man just staring at it and he was shocked. I was looking at him going, wow, what's wrong with this kid? And then he asked his mom, he says, mom, is this true?

Are we evolved pond scum? I mean, is this really my case? Is this my pedigree? And the mom had a long pause and my daughter and I were just five feet from her and the mom says, well, I guess it is right there in that moment.

That mom just stamped that kid's pedigree with untethered, no place in history, no reason to live other than humanistic worldview and values and everything. How much different would that teenager's life show up and be if the mom said, you know what?

That's the story of the idea of the world, but we have a place in history and God's word and he made us. And then we had, and we sinned and fell and we went against him and God had to, you know, wipe out the whole earth and we started this over and then Jesus and salvation, redemption, that kid would have had grounded identity.

But in now, because of what happened in that instance, and you could see his face just change in that instance, like, oh my gosh, I'm just an evolved worm. That's what went through his mind. So next I'd like to contrast, well, why is biblical creation apologetics important compared to some other ones?

Biblical Creation Versus Philosophical Apologetics

And I know I'm probably going to get a lot of emails about this, but I think it's very important, so I want to get into it. So biblical creation, Genesis 1 -11 is real history, talks about our purpose, being accountable to a God who made us, talks about biology and origin and the epic flood.

Then on the other hand, there's philosophical apologetics, and I'm all for a lot of that. I think a lot of those things are important. We want to talk about the culture fit for Christianity. We want to address questions like, are there many ways to God, the relevance of Christianity and how could God do X, Y, or Z?

I understand there's a lot of philosophical questions out there that need to be answered, but I want to argue that biblical creation eclipses those theoretical or philosophical apologetics for the reason that if you don't have a root system, if you don't understand the pedigree, where we came from, how we got here, sin, fall, the flood, a lot of the other things are not going to matter in the first place.

Consider this tree. Now, let's go to a different tree metaphor here. We have the top of the tree and we have the branches and the twigs and the leaves. Then on the bottom part, we have the trunk and the bigger branches and the root system.

You can view philosophical or cultural apologetics as these top parts of the tree. They can sometimes sway in the wind. They're going to change sometimes or subject to the influence of culture many times.

Oftentimes, the answers for philosophical apologetics are going to change for each generation, whereas Genesis 1 to 11 as real history is not going to change. It's permanent. It's solid and lasting over time.

It withstands the changing winds of culture and it can go multi-generationally. It's foundational. What we see a lot is that students who want to focus on the top of the tree and spend a lot of time in philosophical apologetics are not going to be really strong, but those who have a strong foundation and a worldview of Genesis 1 to 11 as true history are going to start and draw from the strength of having a root system and then from that worldview can then build a scaffolding of the rest of their understanding, the rest of their perspectives and views about worldview that are going to be super strong because they're based on a trunk system and a root system that's based in historical true Christianity.

So if your faith starts at the top of the tree and then stays there, your faith won't likely last very long. If you can answer a few philosophical questions or have a couple of good comebacks, your faith is not going to be very strong.

But if your faith starts at the bottom of the tree and goes up, you'll have a different worldview and your faith will in fact be grounded and strong. The further away one gets from the roots, the more susceptible they'll be to the changing winds of culture and the arguments higher up the tree are only strong if the roots are strong.

So without knowing that the Bible is historically true and scientifically credible, one will be more inclined to sway to the philosophies of the world and if people can really understand completely from an actual historical standpoint that Genesis actually unfolded as plainly written, they will have a solid faith and the rest of the truth tree, if you will, will fall into place and be stronger.

Of course, as the president of Genesis Apologetics, I get criticized a lot and people say, well, why can't you just let people believe whatever they want? They can have gap theory or old age or they can think God used evolution.

Why are you guys tossing around trying to split all these differences? And I challenge him by saying this, what if Jesus Christ himself manifested right here, right now in the street corner and he said, I want you to follow me and he took you and a hundred others into a movie theater and he pressed the rewind button and it just so happened for the next hour in this movie, you got to see history rewind for just only 6 ,000 years.

You got to go back 3 ,000 years ago and see the time of David and the time of Abraham and you rewind and you've got all Noah's sons and then you've got the Tower of Babel and And then you've got the flood and oh my gosh, your eyes are huge at this point.

Look at that.

God wrecked everything and look at all those people trying to survive in the flood. And then you go back before that and you only have 1 ,600 years or so of creation and people falling apart because of sin.

Then you have six ordinary days of creation. And I ask people, if you had got to watch that movie and it's true, would it change the way you lived your life today? And the honest answer is absolutely yes.

I feel like I got to watch that movie because I've drilled into these things. I've looked into the flood and dinosaurs and the biblical account and I have like post-creation exposure shock. I know these things right now to the point where they're electrifying in my mind and I go to these movies nowadays, I look at the worldview presented on the History Channel and NOVA and PBS and all these things.

And I'm really aware, wow, there are two truly different worldviews. There's what the world wants everyone to believe and the smoke and mirrors that go along with.

It.

And then there's what God has laid out in the creation account. And if you understand it to be true, everything in your life is different. The way you raise your family, where you spend your money, who you talk to, what you say, it's really a life-changing truth believing that Genesis is history.

Warnings Against Philosophy, False Science, and Neglecting Genesis

And a couple of concluding thoughts here is that Jesus said in Luke 9, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him, the son of man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his father's and of the holy angels.

Colossians 2 admonishes, therefore, if you receive Christ Jesus as Lord, so walk in him being rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of this world and not according to Christ. Ephesians 4 says, we should no longer be like children tossed to and fro carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men, the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things who is the head or Christ.

And first Timothy 6 says, oh, Timothy, keep that which is committed to your trust, avoid profane and vain babblings and the oppositions of science falsely so-called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith.

Okay, my final exhortation is this. I do believe that what the word says in 2 Corinthians 2 .11, it admonishes us and says, you know, be aware or less, don't let Satan take advantage of us for we are not ignorant of his devices.

I see today that many parents are distracted and are deceived by the world's ideas about origins and sadly, I see a lot of churches also that punt on the origins topic. They say things like, oh, Genesis is controversial, so let's just not teach anything about Genesis or that's like saying, let's just teach about the house, but not about the foundation.

I meet a lot of Christians nowadays that say, well, I'm just a New Testament Christian, I don't really have to deal with all the miracles of the Old Testament. So that's a sad thing that we see in today's churches, they're just, they're punting on the origins issue, they're not bravely confronting it and teaching through it.

I believe to this, the enemy responds by saying, oh, look, that's fine. Without teaching Genesis and into this gap, this wide open gap, I will fill today's youth with the idea that, quote, science has clenched the proof that we randomly evolved from mutated mammals over millions of years, so students won't even believe the Bible is credible.

I will destroy the first page of the Bible so that they'll think the rest is just a fairy.

Tale.

And that's one thing we see going on in the landscape today, but we believe that dodging this controversial bullet about being contentious about issues surrounding origins, many churches have lost the battle for some right out of the gate, and I think it's time that we face this issue very boldly.

Thank you very much.