Interview with Paul Taylor | Rapp Report Weekly 0008 | Striving for Eternity

Welcome to the Wrap Report with Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Okay, well, we have a special guest, someone who I have the privilege of calling friend, which means, of course, that he has a good sense of humor, and this will be a lively show if you listen to the last

Weekly Wrap Report with my friend, Pastor Jim Osmond. You know that, well, if this is someone who

I call friend, we could go anywhere. But I will have to give you a preference. You may need to have a translator.

I can't provide translation, but Mr. Paul Taylor, welcome. I'm sorry, what did you say?

I speak English, I'm not sure— I think you were welcoming me in your thick

New Jersey accent, so thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here. Well, I speak

English. I don't know what it is you speak. You must remember my son once, leading a

Bible camp in Oklahoma, and one of the teenage girls on the course said to him, so what language do they speak in England then?

And he said, well, English, of course. And she said, that's interesting.

She said, say something to me in English. Oh, the lack of education of our youth.

For folks to get the history of that joke, you and I were at a conference together in Ohio, and I was being relentless on you about your accent.

And unfortunately, this wasn't caught on camera, probably for my benefit. But just before we started the

Q &A, I asked Michael, who was emceeing it, to get us some water. And he, being from the

Midwest, said, what? And you quickly grabbed the microphone and said, let me translate.

He would like some wa -ter. And everybody was hysterical with that, because clearly

I deserved it. Because every time before you spoke, I was like, does he need translation? It was great.

The mistake of going up against you with your quick wit, I was doomed to lose.

Oh, well, that was good. Yes. So, Paul, for folks who don't know you, maybe some know you from, you used to work with Anson Genesis, and you used to work with Creation Today with Eric Hoven.

But you're doing something different now, and they may know you from the past. Tell us what you're doing up at Mount St.

Helens, other than trying to create another volcano to explode. What you're doing up there, and how people can know more about the ministry up there.

Okay, well, I'm very privileged to lead the Mount St. Helens Creation Center, a very tiny little creation and apologetics ministry.

And we are based very close to the volcano. So, that's great fun in itself.

Really, it's a very interesting combination, this ministry, combination of ministry and tourist center.

Because our center really is like a tourist center, and people do drop in. We have signs on the interstate so that people can find us, and people do drop in.

Not everybody knows straight away what we're about, because there are a number of visitor centers in the area, so they may think that we are one of many.

But the point is that we are giving people a biblical explanation of what happened at the volcano.

And if people are not really aware of what happened at the volcano, in 1980 there was a catastrophic eruption of the volcano, which blew really a large proportion of the top of the mountain off, one cubic mile of rock.

They've estimated that if they were to gather up everything that was removed from the volcano and shared it out among the world's population of 7 billion, everyone would have at least a ton each.

There was a lot of material. And what was interesting is that the land surface around the volcano was changed very rapidly in some rather startling ways.

There's a 25 -foot high section of sedimentary rock layers, approximately a thousand layers altogether, which was formed in three hours.

There's a canyon, which is over 100 feet deep in many places, looking very much like a 140 scale model of the

Grand Canyon, and it was formed in nine hours. An area of land that was so devastated that serious scientists at the time said it would take a thousand years to regrow, has regrown with a vengeance.

And I take people on hikes through it, through thick woodland, with little running streams and diverse flora and fauna, and it's just an incredible place to be.

So really I'm showing people that on a miniature scale, in a local area, things happened that are very, very similar to what happened worldwide at the time of the worldwide flood.

And it really helps us to interpret things. It really is like a living laboratory of things that happened just nearly 40 years ago that we can point people to.

There was one lady came on an excursion last year, and at the end of the excursion,

I take people all around the areas around the volcano to give them all interpretive talks, and she said to me at the end of it, she said, well,

I believed in Genesis before I came, and I knew it was all true, that's why we wanted to come.

But she said, in a sense, I believe it more now, because it's rather as if when you're on an excursion like this, it's just like you are touching

Genesis. And I was impressed with that thought. That's now become the tagline of our ministry,

Mount St. Helens Creation Center, the place where you can touch Genesis, because that's what people are doing.

They're seeing that the Bible is real, not that this proves the Bible in any way. We start with trust that the

Bible is true, but we are interpreting everything that we see around the place through the lens of Scripture, and it's just very, very exciting to do.

Yeah, and I'm hoping to get out there. I think I'm speaking out in Washington State in the fall sometime, and I'm hoping to actually book my flight so I have an extra day or two to get out to you to see it.

I know you've been doing some new tours, and your season's just opening up there now, right, now that all the snow has melted away?

Yeah, well, actually, a lot of the snow hasn't melted away yet, and this is one of the things that people don't realize about this place, because it's very remote, and we're obviously in the valley, and you've got the road ascends 4 ,000 feet to get to the parking lot at the

Johnston Ridge Observatory. Well, they don't open the Johnston Ridge Observatory until the middle of May each year.

That's the earliest they open it, and, of course, they can delay it. There was snow at the end of May last year.

I actually had to abandon one excursion towards the end of May last year in the middle of the excursion because of a very, very bad snow blizzard, and so it does happen, and, of course, it was really fine weather down in the valley when we set off from Castle Rock, where our center is based.

But it is interesting. I take people on these three different approaches to the volcano, so I take people on excursions to all three approaches.

The west side is the most popular. That's where we're situated. That's where they have the best roads and the various other tourist centers, but I also take people around the south side where they can see remnants of earlier eruptions, particularly one very large eruption that must have happened about 2 ,000 years ago, and around the east side where there are remnants of the 1980 eruption because the east side being so remote, they didn't clear it away, so there are still burnt trees there 40 years after the eruption just standing, almost looking as if they're still smoldering, though they're not, and you can see the devastation around the east side, a couple of cars that were damaged that are still there, and of course all the logs floating on Spirit Lake just to the northeast of the volcano.

These are things you can see. I take people on those, and I also take people just a little further afield into the

Columbia Gorge where you can see evidence both of the worldwide flood and of the

Missoula flood, which was a sort of outpouring, must have happened because of trapped flood water in the

Missoula area in Montana that sort of flowed westward across eastern Washington and then down into the

Columbia Valley. Now, I mean, when we think about, you were mentioning

Genesis, and we think about Mount St. Helens, there's some importance to Mount St.

Helens, right? Explain some of that because, you know, look, you and I evangelize, we talk to people that are lost, we hear all these arguments that, you know, the

Grand Canyon had to have been created by a little bit of water over a long period of time, that evolution must be true with lots of time.

What is it that makes Mount St. Helens something that we actually could observe with our own eyes and have recordings of video?

What makes that so important in these discussions? What makes it important is that things happen the way that we would predict from Scripture.

We start by believing Scripture, and we interpret everything that way. But there are people around who say, well, you know, is that a valid way of looking at things?

After all, so many scientists can't really be wrong, can they, when they talk about the possibility of millions of years and slow processes, and we show, yes, they can be wrong because they were not able to predict what happened here at Mount St.

Helens. In fact, they predicted it wrong. But we have a very sensible explanation.

But, you know, it's also just looking at the volcano is in itself important to the

Gospel, because we've got to remember that God did not make the world, I do not believe that God made the world with volcanoes.

God made the world to be perfect. There weren't mountains going to explode and kill people. You know, 57 people died in the 1980 eruption.

That was not something that was part of the way that God made the world in the beginning.

He made a world that was perfect, in which there was no death or disease. So we think that volcanoes actually came about later, at the time of the flood.

We have all sorts of scientific mechanisms that we like to talk to people about to explain the flood.

But, you know, because we can explain the flood by volcanic means, we think that the fountains of the deep that started the flood was volcanic activity on a worldwide scale.

But when we're talking about those scientific principles, we must remember what the main reason was for the flood happening.

We can talk about how the flood happened, but let's remember why the flood happened. The flood happened as the judgment on the sinfulness of men.

The whole point is, we read in the first few verses of Genesis chapter 6, that the wickedness of men's hearts was always wicked in God's sight, continually, so much so that he was grieved that he had made man.

And it's very difficult to understand how God can be so grieved that he made man in that way, but that's what the

Scripture says, so we accept that. But then, of course, we see then that the volcano is a sign that there was a flood, because if there hadn't been a flood, there wouldn't have been volcanoes.

So the volcano, just looking at the volcano, speaks of judgment. It speaks of a time when God judged the world in a way that we know he will judge the world again, finally and completely.

But coupled with that is the fact that we can see the volcano. If we're looking at the volcano, that proves that our ancestors somehow managed to escape the flood.

Well, how did our ancestors escape the flood? And the answer is in probably the most beautiful verse in Genesis, which is

Genesis chapter 6, verse 8, which simply says, Noah found grace in the eyes of the

Lord. So why was Noah saved in the ark? Noah was saved because of grace.

And of course, we read in Hebrews 11 that Noah had the righteousness that comes by faith. So what we're reading is that Noah was saved by grace through faith.

It wasn't something that came from himself. It was something that was given by God. And what

I like to ask people at that point is, do you know anybody else who was ever saved by grace through faith?

And those people are keying into what I say, we'll get their hands straight up, because that's my testimony and that's your testimony.

We were saved by grace through faith. There was nothing about us that enabled us to be saved, nothing that we did.

We were not nice people, but God has decided to save us because of his sovereign will by grace through faith.

Amen. That is so true. So let's take a quick break, and then we'll be right back.

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Biblical hermeneutics. That's right, the art and science of interpreting Scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life verse. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org

to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Okay, so Paul, Genesis comes under attack.

We just heard Todd talk about the importance of Bible interpretation. Why is it important to interpret

Genesis literally versus saying that it's a polemical work or that it is just a, especially

Genesis chapter one, that it was just a story or some would say that it was not literal, it's figurative.

Why is it important to interpret that literally? You know, scientists have told us that no human being can walk on water because clearly the law of gravity would take over and they would sink.

And scientists would clearly tell us that you cannot turn H2O into C2H5OH, you know, water into wine.

Scientists have told us all those things, that a man can't heal the sick, can't raise the dead, cannot be raised from the dead.

But you know, I believe all those things. And they're recorded for us in the witness of Scripture.

And here's the issue. There are many people who say, well, look, it doesn't affect your salvation, what you believe on Genesis one.

If you believe in millions of years, you know, it doesn't stop people going to heaven. You don't have to believe in a literal six -day creation to go to heaven.

And there is a truth in that. That is true. It tells us that whoever calls on the name of the

Lord shall be saved, not whoever calls on the name of the Lord and believes in a six -day creation. That's true. But of course we can say that about some other doctrines too.

And here's the issue. It's an issue of authority. It's an issue of authority.

You know, if you're going to say, well, I don't believe that God has worked in this way, this is mythological, then you're opening the door to saying that everything else is mythological.

You're opening the door to, you know, I was told by my Scripture teacher at school, because they used to have

Scripture teachers in public schools when I was at school. I was told by my Scripture teacher at school that when the people of Israel, the children of Israel were led across the

Red Sea by Moses, that was just the Sea of Reeds, you know. And I was told when there was manna in the desert, well, that was a particular special plant that grew in that place that was very convenient for them.

And things of that sort. Scripture is always being undermined. People are prepared to believe anything.

But, you know, we're supposed to accept what God says. This is the eyewitness account that we have. And if you're going to undermine

Scripture at Genesis, you'll open the door to Scripture being undermined elsewhere. And after all,

Jesus came to save us from our sins. Well, why are we sinners? What does that mean? Where does sin come from?

You're not going to know where sin comes from unless you believe and trust what it says in Genesis chapters 1 through 11.

You know, Jesus came to give us life, because the wages of sin is death.

So by forgiving our sins, he's come to give us life. He's come to conquer death.

Well, you know, if there was always death in the world, because we evolved over millions of years from eight men dying, then what hope is there for the future?

If you're expecting in the future there to be a world where, as Revelation tells us, there will be no more death and no more curse, then there must have been a world in the past where there wasn't any death and wasn't any curse.

Otherwise, the one depends on the other. If you believe in a world where death was only ever figurative, only ever spiritual death, curse was only ever a figurative spiritual curse, and for millions of years there was actual real death, real physical death, then maybe we should expect that in the future.

In which case, what's your hope for the future? A new world where death will continue, but somehow we don't have spiritual death?

Well, what sort of hope is that for the future? It's not a hope that I have. I have a hope in a world to come where there is no more death, no more curse, period, literal, because that's the way things were in the beginning.

So you see, it's an issue of authority. When we fail to believe what Genesis says, we are undermining the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So if there was no literal Adam, would there be a need for a literal

Christ? Well, you know, we are told, aren't we? The Apostle Paul tells us in two places, in Romans 5 and in 1

Corinthians 15, that Jesus is compared to Adam. Jesus is the last

Adam. Well, what sort of comparison is that? The comparison is being made because, you know,

Jesus has represented us on the cross in the way that Adam represented us in the garden.

Adam failed and sin was imputed to us. Jesus has conquered death so that his life is given to us.

He has undone the errors, the sins, the mistakes that Adam made.

And without believing that those events and that that person, Adam, were real, then it strikes me that what we believe about Jesus is not real.

You know, you cannot have a Savior bringing a literal life and conquering literal death.

Death was never literal in the first place. It was simply a spiritual death. If Adam died a spiritual death, that physical death was already in the world, then why did

Jesus have to die a real death on the cross? It doesn't compute. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, I mean, there's so many problems with it.

I mean, then you have death before sin. If there was no literal

Adam, you have sin that was brought about who knows how.

So all of the arguments that Christ had to be the second Adam is just a figurative thing. So then is his sacrifice really literal?

In other words, would we really have a payment for sin? Could we make that claim from Scripture if we ignore a literal reading of Genesis 1?

Well, Genesis 1 through 3 in this case. We read in the New Testament that the sacrifice of Jesus, the second person of the

Trinity, was a contract within the Trinity from all eternity past. You know, so this is not something that was accidental.

And if you're not going to believe in a literal death of Adam, you're not going to believe that if literal sin brought literal death into the world, then you have a problem in that area.

You make everything figurative, and you have a problem in that area. It's more as if then everything turned out badly, so that God has to have a plan

B. His plan A has failed, so his plan B is let's send Jesus to die. And that is not the way that Scripture works.

I don't fully understand. None of us fully understand the measure of what

God was doing, why he planned this in all eternity. But I'm very thankful that he did, and I believe he did, because that's what

Scripture says. You know, this was his plan of salvation for us right from,

I was going to say right from the very beginning, but clearly from before the beginning. This was in all eternity, this plan.

Yeah, even when we say before eternity with God, there was no before anything, let alone before eternity.

That's language for us to understand. We don't have the proper words, do we here? It's why, you know, when

Francis Schaeffer in his book Genesis in Space and Time is trying to use the word, I think he uses the word process at that point, he's saying there's a process of things that, but none of us have the right words to describe.

But nevertheless, it's there, it's true in Scripture, but it works only if we understand that Genesis is literal history.

And, you know, there are many people who want to say, well, it's poetic, you know, it's literature, it's poetic, but, you know,

I do not understand Hebrew like you do. You know, I have to rely on experts like yourself on the subject of Hebrew, but I am told, and you will probably tell me if I'm wrong at this point, but I don't think

I am, I am told that the word order in the early chapters of Genesis indicates that this is narrative history.

It is not the sort of word order or grammar that you get in Hebrew poetry. Yeah, well, for the record, yes,

I have like 10 years of Hebrew school, and when I was 15 years old and could stop going to Hebrew school,

I did. And unfortunately, I gave up Hebrew as quick as I could, which I regret now.

I've been so far away from it. I used to be able to at least read it years ago.

Now I struggle with the reading, but, you know, I did an interesting study. I'm teaching right now through the book of Genesis, and there's phrases that we hear, things people, claims that people make, especially in Genesis 1 when it comes to the word yom, the word for day.

And I've heard people make the argument that everywhere that we have morning or evening with the word yom, it always means a 24 -hour day, or anytime we see a number before the word yom, it's always a 24 -hour day.

Now, being the way I am, looking to do original study, and I've said those things, and I've said them incorrectly, actually, because what

I wanted to do now that I was studying through Genesis, I was looking at that, and I ended up looking at every place in the

Scriptures where we have morning and evening and yom, and I discovered there are some places where morning and evening are not used in a literal sense, and neither is the word yom.

So the day isn't a 24 -hour day. So I like how Jason Lyle had put it, that everywhere where morning and evening is in historical narrative, it always is a literal 24 -hour day.

That would be accurate. However, with the numbering, we would have to say everywhere, and this is true everywhere in Scripture where it's an ordinal number before the word yom, it is always a 24 -hour day.

That's something that then when we look at this and go back to Genesis 1, we have morning and evening used in a literal sense.

Why is it literal? Because we have the sun and the darkness, or the light and the darkness to separate morning from evening, and so we have those being used in a literal sense with yom.

We also have an ordinal number second day, third day, fourth day, an ordinal number being used.

Both of those together I think is pretty strong evidence that the writer of Genesis, which would be

Moses, wanted it to be known that these days were a literal 24 -hour day.

And we see this same pattern outside of Scripture in Jewish writings. It's hard to do an extensive thing to look at everything written in Judaism to make that argument, but looking at some

Hebrew, I was able to confirm that, at least in some Jewish writings. I think that becomes a strong point to say that God was trying to not write a science textbook for us, but to make it clear to us that these were 24 -hour days, and it was accepted.

I mean, even today the Jewish calendar is based off what they assume as the day of creation, and they have it at 57 ,000.

I think we're in 5775, I think, is the year. But it's about 6 ,000 years that the

Jewish calendar would be. It's close, and it's within the sort of margin of error of any sort of calculations that we would do on that subject.

Yeah, I mean, it would be interesting if we could find anywhere else that Moses had talked about days with numbers in, and then

I like to tell people, well, let's turn to Numbers 7, or in fact I'm usually a little bit naughty first and say to them, well, you're all familiar with Numbers 7, and I'm sure many of you can recite it off by heart because it's one of your most familiar subjects in Bible study.

And then I'll say, just in case you can't remember what Numbers 7 is talking about, it's when Moses is sitting down waiting for the gifts for the tabernacle, and for reasons best known to them, the tribes of Israel brought their gifts one day at a time.

And so it tells us in Numbers 7, verse 12, that on the first day it was the tribe of Judah that came.

Then in verse 18, on the second day it was the tribe of Ithaca. On the third day it was the tribe of Zebulun, and so on.

This took 12 days, and they're numbered. First day, second day, third day, fourth day, and so on.

They're numbered like that. Well, poor old Moses obviously was sat there waiting for these gifts for 12 ,000 years because a day with the

Lord is like 1 ,000 years, you know. Yeah, and that's how they try to argue it.

Yeah, and here's the thing, you know, I'll be clear that that's ridiculous. It's obviously 12 literal days.

But I know that Douglas Kelly, in his book Creation and Change, points out that if you're going to interpret Numbers 7 literally, then to be consistent you must interpret

Genesis 1 literally. It's the same grammar. It's the same structure.

Yeah, yeah. And so let's do this. I want to get into some secular discussion with you.

So let's play a commercial, and then after that I want to ask you about some things going on in the U .K.

right now. Okay. It all started with a small -time dream. Hold a conference in a church.

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On May 18th and 19th, the mentionables will be appearing in Greensboro. Head out to Greensboro Christian Church and hear this grassroots phenomena in action, featuring talks and a great debate.

Head over to thementionables .org to get your tickets, or call Greensboro Christian Church at 336 -621 -5226.

The mentionables, small -time voices, big -time noise. A friend of mine,

Tyler Villa, will be debating the issue of suffering, I believe with an atheist at that. So that will be one to go to and check out.

So, Paul, you're from the U .K., although you're now, I know you're suffering, you're down in having come to the

United States and living in nice, sunny Florida. You decided to move to Washington State to be able to experience the extremes of American weather.

I miss the rain. You miss the rain? Yeah, you had all that rain growing up and you came to sunny Florida and you said, yeah, let me get sun that's more like precipitation, but what's this white stuff?

Oh, God bless my friends in Florida. And I like living in Pensacola for many, many reasons.

But I'll tell you what I don't miss. I don't miss leaving the house, walking down the drive to get the mail, getting back to the house and thinking

I need a shower already. I don't miss that, the heat and the humidity.

Well, listen. I have lived in America for quite a long time. Of course, I was privileged just a few weeks ago to be able to go back to the

U .K. and also to the Republic of Ireland, and I was able to travel around and I spoke in a few churches too, and that was a great blessing.

So it was nice to be able to reconnect with a few people over there. It was also nice to be able to get back home here to Washington State.

Well, you know, I understand you have to realize, though, for many of us, we enjoy showering every day, not once a month or so.

So it was good for us to have you down in Florida for that reason. But, hey, look.

Over in the U .K., there's been a big brouhaha going on with this young child,

Alfie. I think it was his name if I mispronounced it. I'm sorry. But over in the

U .K., there is nationalized health care, and here you have a child who has a terminal illness.

The parents were petitioning to try to keep him on life support. That petition failed.

The government had ordered the, I guess, the hospital to not to basically pull the plug on the machine.

He started breathing on his own. The parents actually got the Roman Catholic Church or the

Vatican to approve making him an Italian citizen and bringing him over there.

Everything would have been paid for. In my view, the issue there is there's, you know, you can't argue this is for financial reasons that the hospital was going to put this child to death because they could have let him go.

They could have let him go to Italy, given him some comfort there and with the parents.

The issue that I guess I saw with it is that after he got off the machine, he started breathing on his own, and the hospital's reaction was then to stop feeding him.

And that became an issue I saw is that why stop feeding him?

If you're saying that he's going to die anyway, the hospital could have ended it very quickly, but they starved him to death, as far as I understand.

And I see an issue here. I see an issue where England, even though many of the professing atheists are saying, hey, look,

England is a religious nation. We have a state religion, and therefore, you know, this is being done by religion, not atheism.

And I see England having removed God from culture, removed God from society.

Clearly, they may be religious in name, but if they were truly a religious nation being run by the

Anglican Church, I don't think abortion would be legal in many of the other things that are going on over in England.

Do you see a, because you're more familiar with the UK than many Americans, do you see a changing in, basically, you know, a changing of religion from Christianity or some form of Christianity to atheism in England?

And do you think that that could be what brings about kind of a lack of empathy for the parents going through this with their child?

The issue is that this is a much, much more complex situation than a lot of people realize.

And I'll perhaps say at the outset, so you don't strike any hate mail straight away, that although it's a difficult situation,

I think, and when I sort of come down eventually on one side or the other, so I'm going to come down on the same side as you, is to say that this should not have happened this way.

It was wrong. But I think there's a little bit more to understand than that. A lot of people do not fully understand the difference between the

UK and the United States, the similarities and the difference. They make a lot of knee -jerk comments.

For a start, the United Kingdom is not an atheistic society. It's a godless society.

The influence of Christianity is very small. The Church of England is largely, though there are some good churches there, but it's largely an apostate church.

Certainly, structurally, it seems to be an apostate church when you look at the views of the Archbishop of Canterbury and so on.

However, the majority of people in the United Kingdom, not as big a majority as in the United States, but the majority of people,

I think the last research that did it said 66%, would consider themselves to be

Christian. Now, I do not accept that they are Christian. The number of Christians is very, very small. But I'm saying this is not an atheistic society.

The percentage of atheists is something like about 20%. So it is, again, probably a larger percentage of atheists than in the

United States. But it is not actually at its heart, therefore, an atheistic nation.

In many ways, there are certain structures in the society that are more Christian than the United States.

For example, the ability to be able to pray in schools, the fact that it is not against the law to share your faith in certain circumstances, the fact that the

Bibles are allowed in schools and, in fact, encouraged in many places. So there are certain structural issues like that.

I've heard people bandy around the word socialism, saying, well, you've got a socialized health service in Britain. That is, to some extent, true.

However, it's not as if Britain is a socialist society.

In fact, on many areas, it has more free market than the United States. For example, the United States has a socialist postal service.

Britain does not have a private enterprise system. The United States has a socialist monopolistic system of electricity, natural gas and water distribution, where there is absolutely no competition in the area.

Whereas in the United Kingdom, there's always a minimum of two in every place, a complete free enterprise. So society, in fact, is generally a free enterprise society.

But when you come to this particular issue with this boy, one of the difficulties is that there are many people who suggested, and I've read comments from Christians in the

United Kingdom looking at this, who said, well, this was a boy who was definitely dying.

And what, therefore, has happened is simply prolonging life. The issue of the possibility of going to Italy was not a realistic one, really not a realistic one.

And there was a duty of care there for his doctors to say that really should not happen, because it was certainly not in the child's interest to do that.

Then the child would suffer a great deal. Now, I don't know, and I read what friends of mine in the

United States say, that there's clearly a moral imperative here. The idea of allowing a child to die is abhorrent.

And when I weigh these things up, I guess I am very concerned about the health service in Britain.

I'm concerned that the health service is paid for out of taxes, a health service that allows abortion and teens on the surface to be turning a blind eye to infanticide.

And that is a major concern. I just think it may possibly be that there's a little bit of understanding.

I would still plump on the side of saying that this was wrong for this boy to be allowed to die in this way.

With the balance of probabilities, if there was any possibility of life for him out of a remote,

I think that it would have been better for them to have given him that opportunity for life.

But I don't fully know the circumstances. It's easy to make a knee -jerk reaction based on what you read.

I'm certainly not going to make a knee -jerk reaction in the opposite way. If there's any benefit to the doubt, then

I'm going to come down on the side of life. And it certainly is true that there's a problem with life issues in Britain, and we need to be aware of that.

We talk a lot about abortion. We talk a lot about pro -life versus pro -choice.

And we know what the Bible says about that. And we know that in Britain, they've had abortion longer than in the

United States, because in April, Britain celebrated, if you can put the word celebrated in huge quote marks,

Britain celebrated the 50th anniversary of legalized killing of unborn babies in Britain following the 1967

Abortion Act. So Britain's record is very, very poor indeed on this issue.

But I do not know the full circumstances. I do not know fully what was in the hearts of those doctors.

I'm not going to say that these were Machiavellian people who were trying to cause suffering and pain.

I do not know enough to fully make a judgment call. I would just,

I suppose, suspect that if there was a possibility of life for this baby, then that should have been taken.

And I'm very, very sad it wasn't. And I think there is a major problem there in British society when these things are allowed to happen.

Yeah, and I think, you know, your take on this is I think is very balanced where you're trying to say, look, until I have the facts,

I shouldn't take a position, which is good. I think one of the things that everyone's maybe ignoring in some of the, because look, he did supposedly have a terminal illness.

But for the grieving of the parents, as a parent, you are going to do everything you can for your child.

And there was a case, and I saw this in the news where they were doing a comparison because there was a case where a father actually came into his, they were going to turn his machine off on his son.

And he ended up, you know, basically holding his son hostage at gunpoint until his son actually recovered.

And his son has a full recovery. Now, granted, the father suffered consequences of bringing a gun in a hospital and whatnot.

But the point being is he had a full recovery and the father did whatever it took for the life of his son.

And the grieving process for the parents, the son is going to pass away if that's going to be the case, no matter what.

It's a question of, are they helping it along or not?

When they stopped feeding him, when he started breathing on his own, that's where I said, okay, this is of concern.

If they're not going to feed him, if he's breathing on his own, feed him. But if it's for the grieving of the parents who have to now live with the fact that in their mind, the state put their child to death, it makes for hardship, not only for that family, but for many others that felt that way.

Now, the state could have, in my mind, just said, okay, we have a way out. Just let him go to Italy.

And then the parents can grieve, go through that. The state doesn't get, they wouldn't cost them anything because the

Vatican was planning on doing everything. And to me, it almost seems like they had a political motive behind it.

Possibly. I mean, you keep saying the state there. Of course, the state was not involved. The British government did not take any decision on this.

These were decisions taken by people within the National Health Service, which while it is a nationalized industry, is a separately governed entity.

That's true. It doesn't make it right, but I'm not therefore holding government ministers to account for this, except in the sense that that's their policy, that all political parties seem to be in support of the

National Health Service, including the current government, which is supposedly a free enterprise government.

But yeah, it's a question that, you know, I have to, when I look at these things, my heart wants to say that I am shocked by this.

I think that the parents needed to be listened to more. They should have the primary responsibility.

At the end of the day, too many institutions we have set up in both our nations have taken away the rights of parents and what they do for the care of their children should be of the most importance.

I'm just saying, you know, these are not always quite as clear cut as they are. And don't forget, you know, the idea of a state controlled monopoly health service is bad, but that does not mean that a monopolistic, large insurance company driven health service is the right biblical way either.

I don't actually see the United States health system as being a biblical model that should be switched to.

There are others. I think the insurance model was created so that we would have no choice but to go to a nationalized healthcare.

Let's see how we can mess it up so bad that people will demand the government take over. It could be, couldn't it?

It could be. I mean, that would be a whole other area of discussion. I've got thoughts on that because I don't know that any country at the moment is running that sort of system in the way that they should as far as I can make out.

But yeah, it is a horribly, horribly difficult thing.

And don't forget as well, there can be people in government type agencies, nationalized agencies, whose whole thinking has been warped in such a way that they honestly, honestly believe that they are taking right decisions when they are really not.

They're taking decisions that are based on their tradition and based on their godlessness and the godlessness of the institutions for which they serve.

And so that again would really be an argument in favor of the parents' position on this, that they were up against a monolithic institution that was not going to bend.

However, compassionate on one level, the doctors are involved in it. So it's still working within a framework, which is not godly.

Yeah. Okay, so let us take a quick break. And then after this, I think it's going to be time for us to play a game.

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All right, so it is time for us to play a game. And let us get our intro music for that. Now it's time for Name That Fallacy.

All right, so we're going to put Paul Taylor on the spot to name this fallacy.

This came in on Twitter. The argument is this. This was a person discussing creation versus evolution.

And it says, the tweet is, why are you creationists always so stupid?

Don't you know that great minds like Richard Dawkins, or sorry, Stephen Hawkins and Richard Dawkins have already proven these things?

Can you name that fallacy? That is the argument from authority fallacy that we should accept someone's opinion because they're supposedly very clever and very eminent.

That is exactly right. I was very impressed, by the way, with your piano playing at the beginning.

It really improved a great deal. Yes, well, you know, we didn't talk about that. I had the privilege of getting a private recital and did not know how talented you are on the piano and had to ask you about it.

I sat quietly in the house like recording it and then asked you for permission to put it online.

I should look to see if I still have that somewhere. You are a very talented piano player. Well, that's very nice of you to say so.

Thank you. But it was what I was originally trained to do, I guess. That was what

I was trained to do. I was trained to be a classical concert pianist. I never really got quite to that level, but that was the training that I had.

Yeah. So, folks, if you have Paul Taylor come speak at your church, which

I recommend you do, by the way, and he's going to let you know before we leave how to get a hold of him for that.

But he travels to churches to speak on many topics, creation, science, evolution, obviously against it.

He speaks on issues of presuppositional apologetics, a whole host of different topics. And what

I suggest you do is when you have him out, have him play piano for you, just saying. It was a real treat.

But, yeah, no, tell me, we see this kind of argument often from people. What is wrong with an appeal to authority?

The wrongness of an appeal to authority is that somebody, however clever they are in their field, can get things wrong.

And sometimes people have actually got eminence in their field simply because their field is incorrect in the first place.

And certainly in the case of both Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins, we're talking about people who are very eminent in a field that we don't actually accept really exists.

You know, somebody who believes in the Big Bang Theory is somebody who's believing in something that doesn't exist.

It doesn't matter how sophisticated that theory is. And this is what we need to understand. It's a highly sophisticated theory, but it doesn't alter the fact that it is nevertheless an incorrect model because it doesn't fit with Scripture.

And the same with Dawkins' views on the theory of evolution. This is something that did not happen.

The Bible speaks again. It's not something that is part of operational science. And, of course, the

Twitter correspondents who said these things have improved obviously clearly do not understand scientific methods because those two scientists are not working within areas that are susceptible to the scientific method.

Scientific method is what you do in experiments here and now. You know, you get two chemicals, for example, colourless chemicals, mix them together, they turn yellow.

If you do the same thing tomorrow with the same chemicals at the same concentrations, the same temperatures and pressures, same amounts, same conditions, then the mixture is going to turn yellow tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.

Same conditions, you will be able to repeat that experiment. When you're talking about a one -off alleged event that happened in the past, that is not susceptible to scientific analysis.

Now, you know, you could take that further. You could say, well, that applies to what we say about creation too because you can't do an experiment to prove that God created the world in six days.

Well, that isn't the issue because not everything is susceptible to scientific analysis. Some things require documentary analysis so that, for example, to prove when and where I was born, you don't do a science experiment, you look at my birth certificate.

And in the same way, to prove how the world was created, you look at the documentary evidence, the eyewitness account that we have from God himself and his work.

Yeah, and we see this often, though, and we, as Christians, can also fall prey to it.

And that's one of the things we have to pay attention to these things because we have to recognize the fact that we could be susceptible as well.

It is true because sometimes people even, let's say that sometimes people even believe the right theologist for the wrong reasons, okay?

And I can't think of a particular theology off the top of my head, you know, and if I pick one, I may pick one that you and I disagree on.

But you know the sort of thing I'm gonna say, that if we could have a completely biblical doctrine, but then we say, well,

I believe that because Pastor So -and -so, who is a well -known evangelical scholar, that's what he's taught.

You know, I suppose for those of us from a British background, it would be very tempting to say, well, look, we're going to accept a view of the sovereignty of God because that was the way it was taught by Dr.

Martin Lloyd -Jones, and we'll quote him. And of course, Martin Lloyd -Jones, were he still here, would be the first to say, you don't believe something because of what

I say. You believe it because it's in Scripture. So we can sometimes even have the right views for the wrong reasons.

Now, you extrapolate that and you say, well, people who believe wrong theologies because they follow the teaching of a well -known pastor who holds that view and haven't looked at Scripture, if we can believe the right things for the wrong reasons, you can certainly believe the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

So yeah, we are very susceptible to that particular trait ourselves. All right, so let us, we're going to play one more game that you are familiar with because you've been to some of our conferences.

So let's take a quick break and then one last game, and then we've got some other things to talk about. Okay. Ding dong,

Jehovah's Witnesses. Ding dong, Mormons. Christian, are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell?

Do you know what your Muslim and Jewish friends believe? You will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book,

What Do They Believe? When we witness to people, we need to present the truth, but it is very wise to know what they believe.

And you will get Andrew Rappaport's book at whatdotheybelieve .com. All right, so let us play a game, and you've played this live with me, so you probably are aware of it, but here is the intro music for that game.

It's time now to start the Spiritual Transition Game.

So Paul, you are going to give me something that we will not be editing this part out. There will be no long silences that get cut out and things like that.

You will hear me stutter and stammer as I try to figure out how to transition from whatever you give me to the gospel.

So go for it. Okay. Well, when I was in the

United Kingdom recently, I was very interested indeed to see the place where King Richard III was discovered buried under a parking lot in Leicester.

Under a parking lot? Yes. Wow. And King Richard was not one of the kings that people had a bad view of, did they?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was a wicked king by all accounts. He was supposed to have had his nephews murdered in the tower, remember?

I'm not that up in my UK history, though. You know, it's not about Americans.

Americans only talk about history of American history, where the rest of the world talks about world history. We really don't.

Even our news is that way. When I was over in the UK, they talked about all the other countries, where in the

U .S. it's just like only what affects the U .S. So here you have a wicked king that they discovered under a parking lot.

Correct, yes. Isn't there, what's his name? There was a missionary, I believe, who also is buried under a parking lot where there's actually a plaque in the parking lot in Ireland.

Known for saying it, I think it's the gentleman who's known for saying give me Ireland or give me death. And I'm drawing a blank on his name.

I think you may have got a couple of things mixed up there, but I think you're probably referring to the fact that the grave of John Knox, the great

Scottish reformer, is under a parking lot in Scotland, in Edinburgh in Scotland.

I remember visiting that particular parking lot along with a gentleman whose voice you heard on a couple of your commercial breaks.

That's how it's real. That's right. Yeah, so I mean, I remember hearing something about that with I guess it was

John Knox where they purposely put the parking lot over where he was because they didn't want people to know where he was buried.

I don't know if that's the same for Richard. No, it was purely accidental.

They didn't know he was buried there. He was buried around the back of a church which used to be on that spot.

And then over the years, that church has been demolished. They didn't have any records of who was in the graveyard.

And later on, a city council building was put up there and the parking lots.

And when they were trying to build a new city council building on the parking lots, they had to dig it up.

And of course, whenever they dig up things like that, they are obliged to contact the archaeological authorities to check whatever's in there before they do anything.

Well, I mean, the thing there is it tells you how, here you have a king, someone who,

I mean, back in a time when people had honor, they lived not just for their own livelihood, but really lived for their legacy.

And here's a king who you'd think his legacy would be known, that it would last, and yet he, they're willing to just not even know where he is, his body, just put a parking lot right over it.

It just says how fleeting life is where people think that what they're living for is their legacy, what they're going to have, even how people are going to know them.

And the reality is in a few generations, people put parking lots over your grave with no thought, no concern.

Even to be discovered later, and the things that people live for in this short life, what, maybe 60, 70, 80 years, and think is so important, and yet how does that compare when we compare that to eternity, to a thousand years, 10 ,000 years, 100 ,000 years from now?

The things we live for and put such value in here and now will be such small glimpses in eternity.

And the biggest thing I think that I see is people who live putting all their value in the here and now to try to get something out of it and make a name for themselves only to spend eternity in a lake of fire because they've broken

God's law and they rebelled against God. Especially these many professing atheists who live their entire life on earth trying to debunk something they know is true, that God exists.

And they spend their whole life trying to prove to everyone that we shouldn't believe in God. And then the moment they die, they're going to face that God that they denied, and they're going to be judged.

And I feel compassion for them because they've spent that little life that they had, and that's going to be faint in the comparison to eternity.

That's the reason we would compel people, try to encourage people, give them the truth of the gospel, and ask them,

Jesus Christ, God Almighty, came to earth and died on a cross in our place for our sin that we might repent and believe in Him and have eternal life.

Not because we deserve it, but because He chose to do that. And my challenge to anyone who doesn't know

Jesus Christ, do that today. Eternity is a really long time to be wrong.

So that's how I guess I would transition from King Richard in the parking lot. Hey, man, good job.

Well, Paul, I appreciate it. I always appreciate being with you. Anytime I get a chance to talk to you, I know with that UK accent, you immediately sound like 20 points smarter than anyone else in the room.

Now, granted, with you and Todd Friel, he's got the height advantage on you, just saying.

I mean, you're just going to sound smarter. How could people get in touch with you for two things?

One, they want to come visit Mount St. Helens, do some of the tours. Also, second, if they want to have you come out and present in their church or homeschool group, whatever, to either about Mount St.

Helens or to have you come and speak, how can they get a hold of you? To find our center, we're in the city of Castle Rock in Washington State.

Castle Rock is right on Interstate 5 at exit 429. It's a very tiny city, so if you're in the downtown area, you would not fail to see where we are.

We're also on Google Maps, and we have signs on the Interstate, so you can find us. But you can find us through our website, mshcreationcenter .org,

where you'll see our calendar of events, and you'll see contact details so that you can get in touch.

And I'm happy to travel around the United States and further afield into Canada, and as I said, a couple of weeks back into the

United Kingdom. So, yeah, I go around and I speak on biblical subjects, creation, apologetics, and so on.

So, yeah, mshcreationcenter .org. MSH stands for Mount St.

Helens. mshcreationcenter .org. Have a look there, and do please get in touch with us.

We'd love to hear from you. And you also have a couple of podcasts, one that I know that I listen to daily.

It's a short two -minute podcast, sort of like my daily rap report that people can subscribe to. If they want to subscribe to that, just go to Rap Report, and you can subscribe and get those dailies.

But you have a daily one that comes out every day. It is Today's Creation Moment, so people should go and subscribe to that.

Go search it on whatever app you would use for podcasts. But you have another one for the

Center that you just started up again. It's called The Mountain and the Word, and I did run that just over a year ago, and for various reasons, coming into the new

Center and having poor acoustics, we stopped it, put it on one side, but God willing, we are getting going with that again.

We've had a new episode of that. So The Mountain and the Word, you can find the feed on our website to be able to subscribe to that, or you can usually search for it in most of the popular podcasting grabbing tools like iTunes and Dog Capture and things like that.

All the creative names they have for that. And we're trying to get you to do a video of how you soundproofed. To be able to do that, you're going to hopefully put a video together for us to see some ways that we can do podcasting and soundproof in areas where there are bad acoustics, and you said you might be able to do that and put that in the

Christian Podcast Community, which is a community you can go on Facebook if you are a Christian podcaster, and what we do there is try to encourage one another to produce better podcasts.

It's also a good place for us to be able to share our podcasts, share people who can be guests, and that was really what got this one.

Someone said, hey, who could be a guest? And I was like, you know, I didn't think about having Paul on as a guest. I should do that because he's really smart.

Not just sounds smart. He actually is smart. Did I just admit that out loud?

Oops. You did. That was very nice of you. I'll put that down on today, Monday, May the 30th, so April the 30th, 2018.

Andrew Rappaport said something nice about me, so I'll be able to remember that because it probably won't happen again for a while.

I'll try never to let that happen again. No, but seriously,

Paul, thanks for coming on. I do listen to your podcasts. Well, the daily one I obviously listen to every day, and it's short, folks.

Just start your day by listening to that. You can listen to Rappaport.

The two of them together will take a total of four minutes unless, of course, you're like me that listens to podcasts at triple speed so that I can concentrate better, and then you're done with both of them in just over a minute.

The weird way my brain works, right? Absolutely. So, Paul, any last minute things you'd like to share?

No, we've shared that. I'm looking forward to, at some point in the near future, being able to interview you for my podcast.

I am having problems with the equipment, as Kanye used to say, that I've set things up here, but I'm still having

TV trouble with this, but that in itself might be instructive. If people are trying to learn how to do podcasts, it may be helpful to them to see what mistakes happen and how it doesn't always work out very well, and you'll be able to see the point on the desk where it's dented, because I've banged my head against it so many times.

Well, it's a good thing you have a hard head. It is. Yeah, every time

I scratch my head, I get splinters. Yeah, so there's a YouTube video for you, Paul Taylor versus the desk.

And Paul Taylor wins. See a desk broken in half. It is a privilege having you on.

I thank you for it. Folks, go out to check out the links. We'll put them into the show notes so you have them there.

Get in touch with Paul. Try to have him out as a speaker in your church. If you're going to be over in Washington State, anywhere near Mount St.

Helens, I encourage you to go out there. I'm actually going to try, since I will be traveling out to Washington State, I'm going to be trying to add some time to my trip so that I can get out there, even though I think it's going to be a three - to five -hour drive out there from where I am, but I will try anyway because it is something

I've been wanting to do. I have been to Mount St. Helens when I was 16. I was not a

Christian. Well, actually, I was a Christian at the time. By the time I was there, that was the summer I became a Christian. So I was a

Christian when I was at Mount St. Helens, but a very new one, and didn't understand all of the significance there, nor did

I have a biblical perspective of it when I was there. So I'm looking forward to getting back there. So, Paul, thank you for coming on.

I appreciate it very much. Well, bless you, brother. Thank you so much for inviting me.

I enjoyed it. All right, folks. We'll just listen. There's one last thing we have, and then we're going to close out.

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