October 7, 2016 Show with Dr. Danny R. Faulkner on “The Created Cosmos: What the Bible Reveals About Astronomy”

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November 14, 2016

“The CREATED COSMOS: What the BIBLE Reveals About ASTRONOMY” Subscribe:

00:01: Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:08: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,
00:16: Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:23: Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:32: 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.
00:46: 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.
00:56: Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon
01:05: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet earth, listening via live streaming.
01:13: This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on the seventh day of October 2016, and I am delighted to have on the program someone who is going to be addressing an issue that's near and dear to my heart.
01:32: Perhaps some of you may recall when I interviewed Colonel Jeffrey Williams, a
01:40: Christian astronaut, right before his last launch into space to work at the space station.
01:48: He was a remarkable guest, and we had students from Christian schools all over the
01:55: United States from pre -k to 12th grade submitting questions for that interview, and I brought up during that program that the whole issue of space travel and astronomy has a special place in my heart, because my father,
02:11: Harry Arntzen, now with the Lord, he helped design the lunar module.
02:17: He was working for Grumman Aviation at the time, and he spent his entire adult life in the aviation and aerospace industry, so this is a very special theme for me today.
02:31: We're going to be talking about the created cosmos, what the Bible reveals about astronomy, and our guest to do that is a guest that I have never interviewed before.
02:41: He's on for the very first time today on Iron Shepard's Iron, Dr. Danny R. Faulkner, who is a former faculty member at the
02:47: University of South Carolina Lancaster for over 26 years, and he is a member of the
02:53: Creation Research Society, editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly, and author of more than a hundred papers in various astronomy and astrophysics journals.
03:05: He's also the author of Universe by Design and the New Astronomy Book, and the very book that I mentioned earlier,
03:14: The Created Cosmos, What the Bible Reveals About Astronomy, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Shepard's Iron, Dr.
03:23: Danny Faulkner. Thank you. Well, Dr. Faulkner, before we even go into the book at hand,
03:30: I'd like to know a little bit about your background, the religious background of your upbringing, if any, how you came to believe in our
03:39: Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and what led you into the field of astronomy. Well, I was born into a
03:46: Christian family. My father, two years old, double schooled to prepare to be a pastor, and about the time
03:54: I started school, he started a small church, small independent Baptist church, where I grew up in that church.
04:01: Also about that time, about a year later, I was, I came to the Lord through a vacation
04:06: Bible school that we had at the church. So I was born again at a very young age. I don't really know when
04:15: I was, became interested in astronomy. I remember being fascinated with the stars at a very early age.
04:22: While my parents were Bible school, I remember sitting on the front stoop of the house and looking up at the sky at night and being fascinated, and we moved from there when
04:30: I was five. So I was definitely preschool, and I always had an interest in it growing up, and I never really gave any thought about what
04:39: I'd do with my life until I was a sophomore in high school. A number of very interesting things came together that year.
04:45: I was kind of introduced to what we call creation science that year, and I came to the conclusion that several things that I learned, one is that you can make a living as an astronomer, and two,
04:55: I had the ability to do that, and number three, I believe that was my life's calling. So that's when I made a decision to my full -time
05:02: Christian service to be an astronomer for God's glory. I went off to college at Bob Jones University and then
05:09: I finished up a math degree with a minor in physics. Then I went to Clemson University where I finished a master's in physics, and then
05:17: I went on to Indiana University where I finished a master's and a Ph .D. in astronomy.
05:23: I took the position as a professor at USC Lancaster, which I already mentioned, introduction, and I had an opportunity there to retire a little early.
05:33: Just a nice little incentive they had to do that at one point, and I took advantage of that so I could pursue creation work full -time.
05:41: I had done some speaking and writing part -time at the university, but I always had in the back of my mind and in my heart if I ever retired in the sense of leaving the university's employment,
05:50: I didn't want to quit working. I wanted to do full -time creation studies, so I've been doing that nearly four years.
05:58: Answers in Genesis had a need, had an opening for my expertise, and so it was just very providential.
06:05: It all came together four years ago for us to make the move up here up to Cincinnati, northern Kentucky, where I've been at Answers in Genesis ever since.
06:13: Just out of curiosity, if you don't mind telling us what year you graduated from Bob Jones University, because I have a number of friends that are graduates of Bob Jones.
06:25: 1976. Okay, well, I think that you actually went at the same time that a former co -host of mine and friend
06:35: Buzz Taylor. I think he graduated somewhere around there. I don't know if you know that name, but so Buzz B -U -Z
06:42: Taylor, just like Buzz Aldrin. Oh, Buzz Taylor?
06:49: Yes, he was a graduate of Bob Jones University. Did he play trumpet? Yes. He was a roommate of mine one year, his first year there.
06:59: You're kidding me. No, I'm not kidding you. Buzz was a new Christian then, and it was my senior year,
07:08: I think, or my junior year, one of the two. I have to think about it now, but yeah, I think it was my junior year.
07:16: We were roommates. That is some providence, and I can swear to you, ladies and gentlemen, that that was not pre -planned or anything.
07:24: It's interesting that I even had the inclination to ask you about what year you graduated. He was a fantastic trumpet player.
07:31: Yeah, he still is. He performs at churches and all kinds of functions, primarily in Pennsylvania, but other places.
07:40: He lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, about five minutes from where I'm sitting right now.
07:46: Was he listening to this broadcast? I don't know if he's listening live. He may be on the road right now, but Buzz had to go back to his full -time career.
07:55: He was co -hosting my program while on medical leave. Oh, okay. He was,
08:01: I don't know if you were even aware, for a number of years, he was pastoring. He was pastoring, beginning in the
08:09: Fundamentalist Baptist circles, and then he became a
08:15: Charismatic for a period and was pastoring in Charismatic churches. Then he became a pastor in the
08:22: Findlay, Ohio Church of God denomination, and finally became a
08:27: Presbyterian and is a member of a local conservative Bible -believing Presbyterian church here in town.
08:33: Well, that's all over the map. Well, tell him hello, and please have him contact me here at Dangers of Genesis. I'd love to talk to him again.
08:40: It's been years. Yeah. Years. That is certainly some coincidence.
08:47: Amazing. Well, I'm going to announce our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.
08:56: Danny Faulkner, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
09:04: Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old
09:13: USA. Although I doubt that a subject like today would provoke you to want to remain anonymous, we always give our listeners that option if it makes them feel more comfortable to remain anonymous.
09:29: And again, that is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.
09:35: Well, some people would be surprised to hear that the
09:42: Bible has anything to say about astronomy other than perhaps everybody knows, even most people who are not believers in Christ or even remotely
09:54: Christian in any way. They've heard about the star of Bethlehem and so on and the Magi following the star, but that may be the extent of what people would readily think the
10:06: Bible says about astronomy. So what does Scripture plainly teach about astronomy?
10:13: Oh, well, Chris, there's a huge amount of stuff in the Bible about astronomy. When I began working on this book years ago, actually,
10:21: I began doing a survey of all allusions, all mentions of astronomical objects or phenomenon, and I was stunned at how many times they're mentioned in there.
10:32: So you have, of course, early on the creation of heaven and earth. You have this thing in the
10:37: King James, the firmament and other more modern translations, expanse or sky. I like the
10:42: Hebrew term Archaea, and it's a key term to dealing with cosmology.
10:48: That's on day two, actually. And then on day four, you have the astronomical bodies. The word star there,
10:54: I think, includes all things astronomical to us, including all the sun, the moon are mentioned specifically, though not by name.
11:01: And then throughout Scripture, you find them mentioned many, many times. You have stars mentioned in dreams, for instance, out of Joseph, one of his dreams, you have them mentioned in the covenant with Abraham.
11:16: You find them mentioned frequently in the apocalyptic literature from the Old Testament, Book of Revelation.
11:22: We find again and again they're talked about. So we have calendars are sort of things mentioned.
11:28: One of the purposes is to keep the heavenly bodies as a calendar, and that on the monthly lunar calendar that the
11:37: Hebrews used, it was based upon the phase of the moon. And you have to talk about then, well, how does that work?
11:43: And how do you determine those sorts of things? And that comes up again and again. For instance, the Passover was on the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
11:54: And so it goes all these many, many different passages. I do a survey of those, but then there are all sorts of other things you can talk about.
12:02: Astrology is kind of related to astronomy, at least it used to be through much of history. You already mentioned the Christmas star, people call it, from Matthew 2.
12:10: I have a chapter on that in the book. We talk about what happened at the time of Joshua and Hezekiah with the sun appearing to stop in the sky and also the reversal of direction in Hezekiah.
12:21: So just all sorts of fascinating mentions throughout, all sorts of questions we try to look at. Toward the end of the book,
12:27: I have questions that people have, you know, okay, related to astronomy, for instance. So what about ETs and UFOs and flying saucers?
12:36: Does the Bible have answers on that? We have a chapter on that as well. So it's a pretty robust treatment of everything
12:42: I could think of, at least dealing with astronomical phenomenon. We have a listener in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Casey, who says, can you please ask
12:55: Dr. Faulkner to explain starlight in a young universe and what he thinks about Hugh Ross's views?
13:04: Oh boy, right off the bat. I'll start with the second question first,
13:12: Hugh Ross. Hugh Ross and I obviously have, if you've followed, you know, much of what he's written or said and what
13:19: I've written or said or AIG has. We obviously have some big differences. I want to make it very clear that I have a pretty good relationship with Hugh.
13:29: We've, we converse from time to time. We have a very good relationship. Actually, I think we disagree a lot on things.
13:35: But, you know, we kind of keep in mind that we do agree on many other things, such as the virgin birth, the resurrection, the deity of Jesus Christ, salvation through his finished work, those things.
13:45: Creation and intelligent design? Well, yeah, in general, we do. We differ, though, on the age of creation.
13:52: I happen to believe the creation week was six days, and that was only a few thousand years ago. I get that from the chronologies and chronologies found in the
14:01: Old Testament. He believes in billions of years. He believes the Big Bang was
14:06: God's creative act found in the first few verses of Genesis. And I disagree with that completely.
14:13: So, again, I think sometimes in these kind of debates, people get kind of ugly and argumentative and it gets kind of rough.
14:22: And Hugh's always been very gentlemanly. I must commend him for that. And so I enjoy interacting with him, even though I disagree with him.
14:29: We're not disagreeable when we do. And so I want to make it very clear there's nothing personal at all there.
14:36: It's just a difference of opinion on this. And I clearly think he's wrong, and there are certain ramifications of having wrong beliefs there.
14:44: But anyway, he's otherwise orthodox, and I don't doubt the man's salvation for a minute. I want to make that very clear as well.
14:51: Getting back to the first question, that's a biggie. If I were going to make a case for billions of years, that would be where I would go, the starlight, what we call the starlight travel time problem.
15:02: The fact of the matter is that the universe is 6 ,000 years old. We often express distances in astronomy in terms of what we call a light year.
15:10: That's a light year is about six trillion miles. You take the speed of light, multiply the number of seconds in a year, and you get that kind of distance.
15:17: The nearest stars are, the nearest one's only a little over four light years away. And most of the ones we see at night are maybe hundreds of light years away.
15:24: So that's not a problem. But when you get out talking about galaxies, for instance, that is a problem, because the nearest galaxy of any size is the
15:32: Andromeda galaxy. This time of year at night, if you've got a dark sky and nowhere to look, you can see it's a little fuzzy patch in the sky.
15:38: It's about two million light years away, and that's the closest one. So consequently, how do you explain that in terms of a recent creation?
15:47: And there have been a number of explanations put forth. I can know at least a half a dozen out there.
15:54: I find problems with, and good points, too, almost all of those. So about three or four years ago,
16:00: I published my own solution at our Answers Research Journal at the website of Answers in Genesis.
16:08: That's answersingenesis .org. But I also have a chapter in the book on that, so you can get it several different ways.
16:14: And I'll give a brief rundown of my proposal for a solution to this. First of all,
16:20: I noticed that we had to clear up a couple of misconceptions. One is that even Adam had a light travel time problem, because when he was made on day six, it was only two days after God made stars.
16:32: And I already mentioned that the nearest star is four light years away. So I asked the question, when dark fell on the first night, the beginning of day seven, when he looked up at the sky, what did
16:43: Adam see? And I think he obviously had to see stars pretty much the way we see them. Because you see, the functions given on the day four account would not be fulfilled if they were not visible right away.
16:54: So I believe he saw stars. And so how could he see even the nearest stars? We don't worry about that today.
17:00: We worry about the most distant objects. My question is, how could he see the closest astronomical objects?
17:07: And if we could answer that, solve Adam's light travel time problem, then I think we can certainly solve our light travel time problem today.
17:18: Another point that I want to make is that many people seem to think that everything that God created in the creation week was ex nihilo, an instantaneous poof.
17:25: There's a tree, poof, there's a whale, and there's none of this before that. But if you pay careful attention to the text, that's not exactly what it says.
17:35: Some things were ex nihilo, but some things were made of matter that he had created prior in the creation week.
17:41: For instance, on day six, God made Adam out of the dust of the ground. That was matter he had made earlier in the week.
17:48: Created, I should say, out of nothing. But he didn't create man out of nothing. If you look in chapter two, and it talks there about the creation of land animals and birds, it speaks of them coming up out of the ground too, similar to how man came out of the ground.
18:02: So again, it wasn't ex nihilo. And I think in both cases, it's just some sort of rapid, miraculous process.
18:09: I think it was not instantaneous, but it took an instant, or a moment, I should say, or a few moments to happen.
18:15: And God formed them and shaped them and made them alive. There's a lot of miracle there, but there's, again, a process involved.
18:21: And I see that again and again. And what strikes me more interesting is on day three, we have the creation of plants after the dry land appears.
18:29: And two different Hebrew verbs are used there in verses 10 and 11, talking about the development of the plants.
18:35: It doesn't say that this poof appeared out of nothing, but it says that God caused them to grow.
18:40: They sprouted, or shot up, or thrust. I think in King James, it's bring forth or brought forth that was used there.
18:47: Two different verbs, a lot of overlapping meaning. And they suggest very dynamic processes going on.
18:55: When I came to grips with that a few years ago, I got to ask myself the question, well, if I would have been there, what would I have seen?
19:01: And I believe what I would have seen is something like a time -lapse movie. Have you seen plants over the course of weeks shooting up and flowering and so forth?
19:09: I think that's sort of what happened on day three. It was normal growth, perhaps, but it ended up normally fast, or super fast.
19:17: And I think the reason there is that God needed to mature those plants, because from verse 30 of chapter one, we know that man and beast both feasted on plants at the very beginning.
19:27: There was no carnivorous activity. And so consequently, all those plants had to mature pretty quickly from day three.
19:34: Otherwise, in days five and six, you have a lot of starving animals and people both. So he had to mature those.
19:41: Well, I had to ask the question, well, maybe there are some common processes going from one day to another, kind of interpreted one day in terms of another.
19:49: If you see these abnormally fast developments going on in one day, miraculously fast, maybe it's happening on another day as well.
19:57: So I propose that on day four, it doesn't really say what happened, but God made the stars. And then
20:03: I believe what he did to have them fulfill their functions as well, he had to make them visible. He rapidly brought the light to the earth.
20:11: Now, a couple of people out there suggested physical mechanisms by which that might have happened, such as changing speed of light by changing the constant nature or you're talking about the time dilation and general relativity.
20:23: Those are fine, but I'm not looking for a physical mechanism. I think I'm looking for a miraculous one.
20:30: We sometimes as creation scientists tend to think, well, the creation week had to obey the physical laws we see in the world today.
20:38: But what part of the miracle of creation are we missing there? I think the whole thing was miraculous, and it really wasn't until maybe in stages or certainly at the end of the week,
20:48: God switched from the miracle of creation to the miracle of sustaining, if you will, as Colossians 117 and Hebrews 1 .3
20:57: talk about the sustained moment by moment by the power of God's word. So my proposal, again, is a miracle that took place during the week.
21:08: And if you want a physical mechanism, you might as well ask what the physical mechanism of the virgin birth and resurrection are.
21:14: We recognize those as miracles. Why can't we recognize the miracle of creation? And I'm not suggesting that God just made the light in transit, because I really do believe when
21:24: I look at the Andromeda galaxy tonight, I'll be looking at light that actually did leave that galaxy.
21:32: But I don't believe it's been traveling nearly 2 million years to get here. Well, thank you,
21:39: Casey, in Kannapolis, North Carolina. And I assume I am pronouncing that correctly, although I'm not certain.
21:46: And if you give us your full mailing address, Casey, you have just won a free copy of this beautiful hardcover book,
21:55: The Created Cosmos, What the Bible Reveals About Astronomy by our guest, Dr.
22:00: Danny R. Faulkner. And that is compliments of the publishers, Master Books and New Leaf Publications, and also the
22:10: Answers in Genesis folks. So we really thank all of those who made these free copies possible.
22:19: And keep your eye open for a package from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who sponsor
22:25: Iron Sharpens Iron. They ship out all of our listeners free books and Bibles when they win them by submitting questions.
22:35: And we thank you again for contributing to our discussion today,
22:41: Casey. And so make sure you get us your full mailing address. We have another listener in North Carolina, this one from Randleman, North Carolina.
22:53: Seth asks, how are you and other Christian scientists, and of course, he doesn't mean the cult, such as Dr.
23:04: Jason Lyle, welcomed among the so -called intellectual elite of non -believing scientists?
23:10: Is your work received well or scrutinized? Well, I guess every scientist's work should be scrutinized at some level or another.
23:18: But if you could respond to Seth in Randleman, North Carolina. Okay, I know
23:24: Jason pretty well, and I've not really discussed this particular question with Jason much. He went directly from grad school into creation science full time.
23:34: He worked at Answers in Genesis before he went to Institute of Creation Research in Dallas. In fact, I took his place after he left here.
23:41: But my own perspective, I published quite a bit in the secular literature before when
23:48: I was in graduate school, and I was a professor all those years. I published, I was involved in a research program with a colleague of mine, and we've published, most of my work has been on eclipsing binary stars, and we've published many papers together in that.
24:01: We continue to do so and do work together. That work is just fine. People don't have any,
24:07: I've never had any complaints about that kind of work that I've done. And then I've also published in the creation literature.
24:13: I have three books on creation now related to astronomy. I have many articles. And I don't get too many complaints.
24:20: I don't have many people contacting me, other astronomers,
24:25: I guess, kind of saying how horrible my work is. I'm sure some people have some bad feelings about that.
24:33: They do. They tend to keep it to themselves. One question that comes up frequently that I get is, well, how did
24:40: I survive? Because where I was was a state university campus, part of the University of South Carolina system, and people wonder, well, how did that work out?
24:49: Many people have seen the movie Expelled with Ben Stein, where people who are creationists got punished and kicked out and so forth.
24:58: Well, that's the bad news. The good news is not every story is like that. My story could not be more different.
25:04: I was fully promoted. I was a full professor. I was tenured. And when I left, I left with their blessings.
25:09: I wasn't chased off. And they gave me the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus upon my retirement.
25:16: And they respected the work that I did in the classroom. I was a good teacher. I got at least one year.
25:21: I was teacher of the year on our campus. And I also had service to the profession and to the community and to the campus.
25:28: And so they respected me because of the work I did. Academic freedom is alive and well at the
25:34: University of South Carolina. Even though people did disagree with me on that one point, they saw the value and worth that I did in that field as well as other things.
25:43: So I've not really had much criticism coming from other people. I really haven't.
25:48: I feel blessed in that respect that I've not had a lot of slings and arrows come my way.
25:54: That might change someday, but so far, I've come out pretty much unscathed. Well, praise
25:59: God for that. And guess what, Seth? You are also getting a free copy of The Created Cosmos, compliments of Master Books and New Leaf Publications, and also the folks at Answers in Genesis.
26:16: So we thank them all for providing these again. And keep your eye open for a package from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.
26:25: We need your full mailing address, and we'll get that out to you as soon as possible. We're going to go to our first station break right now.
26:32: If you'd like to join us on the air as well, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
26:39: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the
26:47: USA. I apologize to our overseas and Canadian listeners. We can only provide the free books to winners who are from the
26:59: United States due to the astronomical cost of shipping to parts overseas in Canada.
27:08: And so I hope that you can respect that. And we apologize again for that.
27:15: We give out so many books on iron sharpens iron that the Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service might be out of business paying for all the shipping fees for sending those out, especially a nice big hardcover book like this.
27:28: This is a real treat from the publishers. But we're going to be back,
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31:01: This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is Dr. Danny R.
31:07: Faulkner, and he is the author of a number of books, including the one we're discussing today, The Created Cosmos, What the
31:15: Bible Reveals About Astronomy. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is
31:21: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We do have a listener in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Jordan, who asks,
31:33: Have you ever debated an old earth creationist or evolutionist? And how would you outline your opening statement if you were to debate one of those?
31:46: Well, I've not really been in debates too much, and I've not really debated an evolutionist or an old earther.
31:53: What's the question again? Old earther or evolutionist? Well, he actually included both, an old earth creationist or an evolutionist.
31:59: Okay, I thought I misremembered that. I have debated Hugh Ross a couple of times. And so the ground rules would be very different than the two situations.
32:10: If you're debating someone who's coming from an evolutionary viewpoint who is an atheist, you're going to have to probably take a different approach than you would if you're dealing with, say, a theistic evolutionist or progressive creationist such as Hugh Ross.
32:26: In the case of Hugh or other progressive creationists who believe in billions of years, you're going to agree upon certain things.
32:32: The inspiration of scripture, hopefully, those sorts of things you might want to acknowledge as a front, and then you're going to turn to scripture and argue or talk about scripture.
32:40: If you're dealing with a theistic approach, then probably, unless you're trying to appeal to a certain part of the audience or maybe the entire audience, you're probably not going to spend a lot of time with scripture.
32:52: I would think it'd be good to at least give the reason why you're a special creationist because that's what
32:59: God's word tells us. I would certainly not apologize. I'd make that upfront admission and say, this is my worldview and contrast it to the worldview of the evolutionist.
33:10: I'd point out that this is really not a question about scientific conclusions as much as it is a question about your worldviews.
33:17: It's a battle of worldviews. I start with one set of assumptions. They're starting with a different set of assumptions. But we'd still look at the same data.
33:25: We look at the same world. We just interpreted the world and the data of the world very differently because of our different assumptions we bring to the table.
33:33: And that's the real crux of why we disagree. If you start off just trying to talk about scientific evidence and don't go to scripture at all,
33:41: I think you're kind of missing the whole point. And you're not going to look terribly good.
33:49: I think the temptation there is to soft pedal the biblical aspect and think that somehow that's going to win respect of the other side, but it doesn't work.
33:59: I have found in discussions with people who are not Christians, maybe not even theists at all, but if you lay out what your presuppositions are, why you believe in it, how you reach your conclusions, they tend to respect that.
34:11: I mean, they don't agree with it, but they can say, okay, I can see, given your assumptions you're making, why you reach the conclusion you reach.
34:19: And so I would always, no matter what the venue, you're going to change your message a little bit, emphasis a bit, depending on who you're talking to and the audience you're speaking to in front of.
34:28: But I think you always should bring it back to scripture regardless, because otherwise, what's the point of even entering the discussion?
34:36: Well, thank you, Jordan. And guess what? You're also getting a free copy of The Created Cosmos by our guest,
34:43: Dr. Danny R. Faulkner, and co -authored by Lee Anderson Jr.
34:49: And keep your eye open in the mail for that. We need your mailing address, and we will ship that out to you as soon as possible.
34:56: It'll be shipped out to you, as I said earlier, by Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.
35:03: Tell us something about your co -author, Lee Anderson Jr. Well, Lee and I both work in the research department here at Answers in Genesis.
35:12: Our boss is Andrew Snelling. He's the head of the research department. He's a geologist. He has several functions where we work, including being the editor of the online research journal we have,
35:23: Answers Research Journal. And Lee is his assistant. He helps with the day -to -day operations of that journal and just does more or less whatever
35:34: Andrew requires of Lee. Lee has expertise in Hebrew.
35:40: He's not a Hebraist, but he has quite a bit of Hebrew studies under his belt and theological studies.
35:45: He has some similar degrees behind him. And so I found him very helpful. We're good friends. When I proposed doing this book, or completing it, really,
35:55: I thought about it for several years but hadn't really organized it and started on it full tilt. He became very interested in the project.
36:03: And he brought some organizational skills that I lack. And he organized the book. We worked together, but he laid out the outline and how the logical order it should go in.
36:12: Like, for instance, it's divided into four parts with different chapters in each one. He wrote the first chapter of the book and also an appendix that we have there.
36:22: But he acted as my editor and reviewer quite a bit. We had other people review and edit it, but he was the first line there and was extremely helpful.
36:30: And I discuss a lot of Hebrew in the book. And I'm not a Hebrew specialist.
36:36: I've never really formally studied Hebrew. And so he was a valuable aid in getting that part of the book done.
36:42: So he was very helpful in this book. Well, tell us something more about the astronomical anomalies in the
36:51: Bible, what scripture says about the unusual astronomical events. OK, we have one whole section there with four chapters.
36:59: The first chapter of that section is on the titled Unusual Days of Joshua and Hezekiah. We alluded to that in the first part of the program.
37:06: And the second chapter in that section is on the Christmas star. And then the third chapter in there is the astronomical aspects of Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.
37:16: And then finally, the fourth chapter in that section is astronomical aspects of prophetic literature and end times.
37:22: And that naturally gets into eschatology and future events, because the astronomical bodies of sun, moon, and stars are mentioned quite a bit.
37:32: That was a difficult chapter to write, because I didn't want to endorse any particular viewpoint as best
37:38: I could. On the other hand, I needed to discuss what was meant by these passages.
37:44: That was a tricky chapter in order to write. And as far as Good Friday and the
37:49: Resurrection Sunday go, you know that, as I mentioned before, Passover occurs at the time of full moon. And Resurrection Sunday was a couple days later.
37:58: And we can take some information we find in the Gospels about the timing of the crucifixion.
38:04: And we can actually look for a couple of possible dates. Most people believe that Jesus was crucified on Friday.
38:10: And if he was, then that really leaves two possible dates for the date of the crucifixion.
38:15: One is in A .D. 30, and the other is A .D. 33. I find it fascinating that we can actually fix, to the day, the date that the crucifixion took place.
38:25: Does that really mean a whole lot? Well, not really, but it certainly is a fun thing to look at and an interesting thing to discuss and explore.
38:32: And again, I have a whole chapter dedicated to that. The, what we mentioned before, due to one of our listeners' questions, we brought up both
38:44: Old Earth creationists and evolutionists. What percentage, according to your personal experience and interaction with other scientists, what percentage of Old Earth creationists,
38:58: Bible -believing Old Earth creationist Christians, would also believe in theistic evolution in regard to man?
39:11: Oh boy, I don't have any hard statistics. I certainly know colleagues in the field.
39:16: I go to meetings of the American Astronomical Society from time to time. There's even a subgroup of that called
39:22: Christian Astronomers. And the person who organized that I know is a theistic evolutionist.
39:28: I don't know what her position exactly on the creation of man is, but I suspect she believes that man evolved from ape -like creatures under God's direction.
39:41: And then at some point, man became human. I don't know how that works.
39:49: I disagree with that completely. But I would say among that group, more of them would believe, would turn themselves theistic evolutionists and would also, many of them would view the creation of man in evolutionary terms as well.
40:05: There's a big divide there. There's some people who accept evolution of most creatures, but yet think that man was somehow directly created.
40:15: That is the traditional Roman Catholic position now. Hugh Ross is different.
40:21: He believes in what's called progressive creation, where God progressively created all sorts of organisms, distinct over long periods of time and somewhat extinct.
40:30: God's then created some more and so forth. So there was never any evolution from one type of an animal to another. And of course, he would say that God directly created man thousands of years ago, more than farther back than we would, closer to 50 or 60 ,000 years ago.
40:46: The thing is, Hugh would believe in evolutionary ideas in astronomy, cosmology, geology, but he would reject biological evolution.
40:55: So I guess my point is, is that among astronomers, the viewpoints are all over the table. I know several other astronomers, good friends of mine, who indeed are six -day recent creationists as I am, and they believe in direct creation of man.
41:07: I do know many others out there who believe in biological evolution and in the biological evolution of human beings.
41:15: And I really would not even begin to venture a guess as to what the percentages break down to on that, though.
41:23: But as far as people that you know personally that you've encountered, what would you think? I would, among the professional astronomers?
41:30: Yes. Yeah, I would say the majority of professional astronomers who profess to be born again would believe in biological evolution.
41:39: I can also say the ones I've had conversations with who are not six -day creationists, but believe in some form of creation and seem to be born -again people,
41:48: I think many of them have not really formulated their ideas on the days of creation or on the creation of man.
41:56: I find that startling that you would not actually think that through and develop some ideas.
42:03: And I find that remarkable that people would not do that. I often say that people deal with that by not dealing with it.
42:11: I think they recognize there's some tensions there and they realize that they really take scripture seriously.
42:18: Then they've got a problem with the science they've been taught and believe they even teach themselves many times.
42:25: And so the best way is just not to have any firm position on the days of creation, firm position on the creation of man many times.
42:33: I find that a most unsatisfying situation. I can't live my life like that, but apparently other people can.
42:41: We have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who asks,
42:48: Judging from something you said about eschatology involving the stars, I was wondering what your interpretation of Revelation 6 .13
42:59: is, which reads, And the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.
43:11: Okay, I'll give two possibilities. First of all, we use the word star very differently today than people in the past did.
43:23: If you look at the Hebrew word for star, kokab, if you look actually at any other ancient word for stars,
43:33: Greek would be aster and stella in Latin. In many other languages, ancient languages, they all refer to point -like luminous objects in the sky.
43:45: The sun and the moon are in their own category. They're much brighter and they're much bigger, but stars don't really have any extent to them, as you can see.
43:53: Planets look like stars. There are five naked eye planets, three are out in the evening now, and one's in the morning sky.
43:59: They look like bright stars to me. Shooting stars, or meteors, we call them today. We have comets.
44:06: Those are, the word comet means hairy. That was referred to hairy stars because they're kind of fuzzy in appearance. So they even had a word called nebula, referring to a cloudy -looking star.
44:16: Today, we redefine all those terms. Planets are distinct from stars, even though they look like stars. Meteors are not stars at all, and so forth.
44:23: We're very particular in the way we define those. So when we read the word star there in Revelation 6, talking about the stars falling from heaven, you've got to be very careful.
44:33: Is it talking about stars as we know them today? Or would it be in the context as people understood in the past?
44:39: And I think the latter, not the former. So I don't think it's talking about stars as we know them today falling to the earth.
44:45: By the way, I'm not saying that ancient usage, including the Bible, is wrong. I'm simply saying it's different. You can make a case that planets are stars in that context.
44:55: Not a problem at all. And so my two things I would offer. Number one is this could be referred to the mother of all meteor showers.
45:04: We have showers from time to time throughout the year where the number of meteors increase. So we have, and if you go out in a dark sky anywhere, any length of time, you'll see a few meteors every night.
45:14: But we have sometimes a year when there's a big burst in those. Back over 15 years ago, my son and I went out one morning and caught a burst in the landed meteor showers.
45:26: It was just a wonderful time. We were seeing probably a meteor every second or so.
45:33: It was that many. The sky was just alight with these things. It was incredible difficult to count. There were so many of them. It could refer to something like that.
45:41: But I think another possibility is it's talking about the loss of visibility of stars.
45:46: This is alluded to elsewhere in the apocalyptic literature. It talks about a third of the stars disappearing or faded.
45:53: It talks about the sun and the moon being faded. So the other possibility is it could be this very perplexing darkening of the heavenly bodies.
46:04: I think some people try to argue that maybe something happens in the atmosphere. Maybe man does something to kick up dust in the atmosphere or some other disaster happens.
46:12: But I think it's even worse than that. I think it's going to be, because it's such an apocalyptic thing,
46:18: I think it's perhaps referring to something miraculous that's going to happen yet in the
46:23: Earth. And if you can explain it in terms of natural phenomenon, it's not nearly as perplexing or terrifying as it would be if we don't have an explanation for it.
46:34: So again, I prefer the dimming of the stars. So you lose probably a third of the ones we normally can see.
46:41: Either that or a very, very strong meteor shower. And Susan's follow -up question was, how do you interpret
46:50: Joel 2 .31, the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and the terrible day of the
46:57: Lord come? Yeah, that's one people like. There are three places in Scripture where the moon is referred to as being a blood.
47:07: One is in Joel 2 and then Acts 2 at the day of Pentecost where Peter is quoting from that.
47:14: The context there is he is referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit there.
47:20: You had this miracle of various languages being understood. You had Jews from all over the world.
47:25: Many of them couldn't speak Hebrew or Aramaic anymore. Yet they're in Jerusalem and they get up, the people start speaking there in the streets of Jerusalem.
47:33: And everybody says, I just heard him in my native tongue of Parthian. Somebody else says, no, it's Libyan. No, it's
47:38: Greek. They all heard the same thing in their own language and that was remarkable.
47:44: And it talks there about the young men having visions and old men having dreams of the
47:49: Spirit being poured out. And that's what it's talking about there. So I think that Joel is talking about a future event and then
47:56: Peter on the day of Pentecost says, well, you know, at least part of this, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit has been done before your very eyes and ears.
48:07: That doesn't mean that it's all going to be fulfilled there.
48:13: Many times scripture is partially fulfilled once and then again later on. So there could be another fulfillment
48:18: I'm expecting in the future. The moon turning to blood is the main question here most people have.
48:25: And it's been very much of an excitement over the recent years, going back about five years now.
48:33: There was a series of total lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015 that coincided with the high feasts of Judaism.
48:43: Passover and Sukkot. And there was a particular man, Mark Biltz from Tacoma, Seattle area, who was talking about this quite a bit.
48:54: Started about six, seven years ago. John Hagee picked up on it. They call these the blood moons, thinking that, you know, the most common color we see during a total lunar eclipse is red or some shade of red or orange.
49:05: And that's reminiscent of blood. And they were talking about this being a fulfillment of this.
49:10: And of course, the implication being that the Lord is going to return to earth. In fact, so much so that people actually were anticipating or predicting, if you will, the return of the
49:19: Lord at September, October of 2014, failing that 2015. Well, here we are a year later, 2016.
49:26: It hasn't happened. So there's a credibility problem there. But, you know, there's also a passage in the book of Revelation, I think in chapter six talks about the moon being turned to blood as well.
49:38: And later on the book of Revelation, it talks about blood as well. And when I learned this in preparation for this book, it really opened my eyes.
49:47: Many times people, when they think of the moon being turned to blood, they think, well, blood is red.
49:52: Hence, maybe it's talking here about the moon turning red. But there's another possibility here.
50:01: I remember Joel was talking to a totally Hebrew audience. Peter in Acts 2 was speaking to a totally
50:07: Hebrew audience. These are people who are quite familiar with the sacrifices there in Jerusalem. And, you know, when they were doing sacrifices every day in there, and they didn't clean up between sacrifices.
50:18: You would have a sacrifice, spill the blood there at the altar. You do it again and do it again. And you had quite a mess of a buildup of blood there.
50:26: And when blood sits on a surface that dries, it doesn't look red anymore. It's very dark, very dark brown, almost a black color.
50:34: And so I've come to the conclusion when it's talking about the moon being turned to blood, it's not talking about the moon turning red at all.
50:41: It's talking about the moon being darkened. And that agrees with other Old Testament passages and the words of Jesus in the
50:47: New Testament that signs of the end of the world, one of the signs will be the moon and the sun both being darkened.
50:55: And I think that works very well with the moon being turned to blood. Again, an ancient
51:00: Hebrew audience there in Jerusalem familiar with the sacrifices at the temple would have understood that connection better than we would today on that front.
51:09: And that dovetails very nicely with my suggested solution or answer to the question about the third of the stars falling.
51:17: If it's talking about this exceptional dimming, it would dim the moon and the sun. It would also dim the stars as well.
51:24: So that in a nutshell is my interpretation of that question.
51:30: Well, thank you very much, Susan. And you also will be getting a free copy of The Created Cosmos, thanks to our friends at Master Books and New Leaf Publishing.
51:42: I think I incorrectly called them New Leaf Publications earlier, but it's actually called New Leaf Publishing. New Leaf Publishing Group to be more specific.
51:51: And we thank them. And we also thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for shipping this out to you.
51:58: CVBBS .com will be on your shipping label that you receive.
52:03: So keep your eye open for that. And we thank you for participating in the program today.
52:11: Boy, you really evoked a lot of listener response here. We have Lou in Sharpsburg, Georgia, who says, how did gravity evolve according to evolutionary theory?
52:25: Oh, boy. These are good questions. Some of them are very tough questions.
52:31: That one, I don't think there's an answer for. I'll give the evolutionary idea, in this case,
52:38: I'm going to tag onto that atheistic theory. The modern creation myth is the
52:45: Big Bang. And that's the ultimate evolutionary theory. It tells us, supposedly, where the universe came from.
52:53: And the universe just happened, is basically what it said there.
52:58: The universe popped into existence. No reason why it did. It just did. And the universe popped into existence with the properties it has, the physical laws that it has.
53:06: And gravity is one of those. And so, if you will, the universe was just an accident.
53:12: And when it happened, gravity happened to be part of the package. Now, one could argue, this is really getting out of the field of science,
53:20: I think, but one could argue that if the universe just randomly appears as the ultimate cosmic accident, then what's the probability that the universe would come into existence?
53:31: The way it did. This is the idea that the properties of the universe were randomly generated, including the properties of gravity that we have.
53:40: There's no reason why gravity exists. It just does, because that's the way the universe is. Just deal with that. That is basically the response.
53:46: And that's led to this idea of what we call the multiverse. People realize, they look at the properties of the universe, how ideally suited it is for our existence.
53:54: It seems like the universe is... The probability of the universe happening the way it happened is vanishingly small, which would lead you back to beliefs and creation.
54:03: Because if the universe is designed, then there has to be a designer. And to avoid that question, people that have now seriously suggested,
54:11: I might say, that we don't live in a universe, but a multiverse. There are actually an infinity of other universes that come into existence, maybe pass out of existence.
54:20: And in most of those universes, life could not exist. We happen to exist in this one.
54:26: Gravity is a necessity for life, so it's no accident that the universe we live in has gravity, and has gravity the way we have it.
54:34: That's basically the answer, I think, many atheistic evolutionists would give today. Well, thank you,
54:42: Lou, in Sharpsburg, Georgia. And you have won our final giveaway book, our final copy of The Created Cosmos by our guests,
54:51: Dr. Danny Faulkner and Lee Anderson Jr. And we thank, once again, our friends at Master Books and New Leaf Publishing Group, and also
55:01: Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, for shipping those out to our listeners.
55:09: And we thank you for helping to make this a very lively discussion. And we're going to be going to another break right now.
55:17: If you would like to join us with another question of your own, our email address is chrisornsen at gmail .com.
55:25: We still have a couple of you waiting to have your questions asked and answered. But if you'd like to join them as well with your own questions, send them to chrisornsen at gmail .com.
55:35: And we're going to be right back after these messages. So please don't go away.
55:47: Chris Ornson here, and I can't wait to head down to Atlanta, Georgia. And here's my friend, Dr. James White, to tell you why.
55:54: Hi, I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I hope you join me at the G3 conference hosted by Pastor Josh Bice and Praise Mill Baptist Church at the
56:02: Georgia International Convention Center in Atlanta, January 19th through the 21st in celebration of the 500th anniversary of the
56:11: Protestant Reformation. I'll be joined by Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, D .A. Carson, Votie Balcombe, Conrad M.
56:18: Bayway, Phil Johnson, Rosaria Butterfield, Todd Friel, and a host of other speakers who are dedicated to the pillars of what
56:25: G3 stands for, gospel, grace, and glory. For more details, go to g3conference .com.
56:33: That's g3conference .com. Thanks, James. Make sure you greet me at the
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57:46: Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsin. If you just tuned us in today, our guest today for the full two hours with one hour to go is
57:54: Dr. Danny R. Faulkner, former faculty member at the University of South Carolina, Lancaster for over 26 years, member of the
58:02: Creation Research Society, editor of the Creation Research Society Quarterly, author of more than 100 papers in various astronomy and astrophysics journals, and author of Universe by Design, The New Astronomy Book, and the book we are discussing today,
58:19: The Created Cosmos, What the Bible Reveals About Astronomy. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is
58:27: ChrisArnsin at gmail .com. ChrisArnsin at gmail .com. Please give us your first name and the city and state you're residing in and your country of residence if you live outside the
58:40: USA. We have Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana, who says, what are a couple of specific ways that your research has affected or confirmed your theology and doctrine?
58:55: Oh, wow. Well, my direct research on eclipsing binary stars that I do professionally, it would be roundabout at best.
59:06: What I find interesting is that binary stars are very common and nobody knows why.
59:12: I suggest that the reason why they're so common is because binary stars offer us a unique way in order to study the properties of stars.
59:21: Binary stars allow us to determine masses of stars, how much matter they have, and that's key because our theories about how stars work treat the...
59:31: Our theories treat or view mass as being the most important independent variable.
59:37: You tell me the mass of a star and I can tell you quite a bit about it. Also, eclipsing binary stars offers the only opportunity we have of directly measuring the diameters of stars, and that's another important parameter to compare our models to.
59:49: If binary stars were pretty rare, we would have very little data to compare to, but the fact is binary stars are very common.
59:58: And that, to me, speaks of creation, design. You know, we have a
01:00:03: God that's given us curiosity about the world. He's given us, I think, directives for doing the world. That includes scientific study, including astronomy.
01:00:11: And he's also seen to it and ordained that we would have plenty of useful objects to study, and that's why binary stars are so important.
01:00:19: Beyond that, many of the binary stars that I study are, they seem to suggest, a recent origin.
01:00:26: That's something my research partner and I have started stumbling across just in the last couple of years. And that is very interesting because many of the stars we study are supposed to be billions of years old, and yet some of the things we're finding suggest that they're far, far younger than that.
01:00:43: And that's an exciting possibility that we're starting to look into.
01:00:49: I, across the board, you know, getting a little more far foot out of the work I directly do.
01:00:55: We do see, I see design across the universe and things. I see a purpose.
01:01:01: I also see evidences that some things out there that we generally are thought to be billions of years old, there actually are some indications that they're far younger than that.
01:01:10: So my job, I think, as a creation astronomer is to bring these to light and discuss these with people.
01:01:17: Thank you, Aaron in Indianapolis, Indiana. Please keep spreading the word. In the Hoosier state about iron sharpens iron.
01:01:25: One of the things I'm wondering about is I continually have heard over the years ever since being a
01:01:34: Christian that there is no science that disproves the biblical accounts of creation or the age of the earth.
01:01:45: But are there, is there scientific evidence that leaves you puzzled that you cannot completely mesh with what you read in scripture?
01:01:55: I mean, obviously, even there are theological issues that delve into the realm of mystery on occasion where things seem to have on their surface contradictions, but in later investigation or deeper, more thorough exegesis, they're not really contradictory at all.
01:02:19: They're just giving different points of view of the same event by different eyewitnesses or what have you. But when it comes to science, is there anything that is scientifically proven that does not mesh perfectly with what you believe as a
01:02:34: Bible -believing Christian, what the scriptures teach? We've got to be careful about, you know, saying scientifically proven because proving things in science is a bit different from what we understand in everyday life and logic where we use deductive rather than inductive reasoning.
01:02:48: So, but there are certain conclusions that many scientists reach that are at tension with what
01:02:54: I understand in scripture. One we've already alluded to in the first hour was the age of the earth, the age of the universe. Most evolutionists believe it's billions of years old.
01:03:02: The reason for that is because of their assumption of evolution. Evolution doesn't happen before our very eyes.
01:03:07: It must happen very slowly if it's happening at all. Hence the need for billions of years.
01:03:12: That's the worldview that's driving that belief. Right, but that's not scientific evidence driving that belief.
01:03:18: That's not evidence. Now, they do marshal certain things such as radiometric dating, and that generally, not always, but generally gives you ages that are older than what
01:03:29: I would expect from scripture. But I don't view that as a problem. It's a problem, but it's not an insurmountable problem in the least.
01:03:36: To tell you the truth, I'm not terribly impressed with radiometric dating. There's a ton of assumptions that go into them.
01:03:42: I'm aware of many observations, many measurements that are actually discordant with one another, and there's a lot of cherry -picking of data that goes on.
01:03:52: It's very sanitized by the time it gets to print, certainly when it's filtered down to the general public. So I don't even view radiometric dating as a problem, really.
01:04:01: It's a bit of a challenge that we have to look at, but again, I think we have very good explanations, and they certainly do not refute what we learned from scripture.
01:04:12: So acknowledging that there are difficulties or some problems that come up, I think that no, the answer is
01:04:19: I've never really seen data that contradict what I learned from scripture.
01:04:25: I think if anything else, it's the other way around. I think the world speaks of a design, it speaks of a creator, and I think there's abundant evidence that it wasn't that long ago as well.
01:04:36: We have a listener in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, Linda, who says,
01:04:43: I'm really enjoying Dr. Faulkner. What do you think of the framework hypothesis and Dr.
01:04:50: Kenneth Gentry's book refuting it? Okay, I'm not familiar with Gentry's book refuting the framework hypothesis.
01:04:59: I've not studied the framework hypothesis a lot. I've read some of the materials, I read a book or two, it's been 10 years,
01:05:05: I guess, since I've read those. The framework hypothesis argues, I believe, that there are some poetic elements to the creation account, and even going deeper into the flood account and elsewhere in the first third or so of Genesis.
01:05:24: And they note these poetic elements that they see, they say this chiasmic structure there, and so they say, well, since this is poetic, this is not really historical narrative.
01:05:37: Instead, it's poetic, and so it's not to be taken as historical narrative, but rather as poetry.
01:05:44: And that lets you be a little loose and free then with how you interpret the days of creation.
01:05:50: And I see several problems there. First of all, we have five books of the Old Testament which are clearly recognized as being poetry.
01:05:57: And the poetry, if there is any there in the first few chapters of Genesis, is dramatically different from the poetry we see in the other books.
01:06:06: The poetry we normally see works off of parallels and contrast, yet the poetic elements that are claimed in the
01:06:12: Book of Genesis are dramatically different, and you don't see those parallels and contrast really showing up in that much, to tell you the truth.
01:06:20: But even if you recognize some beautiful literary devices there, which
01:06:26: I maybe would call that rather than poetic elements, that doesn't mean that it's not historical narrative.
01:06:36: You know, I happen to enjoy history very much, U .S. history, world history, all sorts of eras.
01:06:43: It's a hobby of mine, has been my entire life. And one of the problems with history books is that they read like history books.
01:06:53: They just kind of put a lot of people to sleep. And so when you come to the first few chapters of Genesis, you find a narrative that's very rich in subtlety in the text.
01:07:03: I mean, people have written whole dissertations on just the subtleties found in the first few chapters of Genesis. It's very rich in what's going on there.
01:07:11: But that doesn't mean that that's all it is. I think it's history told with flair and style, and it was inspired,
01:07:18: I believe, by our creator to Moses there on Mount Sinai. And what better evidence of the creative nature of God and the fact that it is
01:07:28: God -breathed in the sense that it is written with style and flair that no human can really match.
01:07:34: So I reject that idea that all it is is a poetry and poetic elements. We can then be loose and free with it.
01:07:41: Also, if it is poetic, then it ought to be very clearly.
01:07:47: You could ask, well, where does this poetic element, where do the poetic elements end and historical elements, the historical narrative begin?
01:07:54: Because the second half of Genesis clearly is historical narrative at that point. And you get different answers.
01:08:02: Some people say, well, the poetry kind of ends in verse after chapter three. Others say, no, it's after chapter nine.
01:08:10: And others, it's even later than that. And I'm saying, well, wait a minute. If it's so clearly poetic, then why can't we agree on where the poetry ends?
01:08:19: And the narrative begins. And if you can't do that, then maybe you're seeing some things there that really are not there at all.
01:08:28: So I think it's an attempt, a framework hypothesis. It's gained popularity in recent years among conservative circles.
01:08:36: And it's usually couched in terms of, I take the Bible very seriously.
01:08:41: I take the Genesis creation account very seriously. But then they really want to kind of fritter away all the details and fritter away the narrative and kind of capitulate on billions of years.
01:08:53: And I think the motivation is all wrong. So I soundly and roundly reject the framework hypothesis.
01:08:59: I don't think it's really a faithful reading of the creation narrative at all. What is your thought?
01:09:06: What are your thoughts on the gap theory? Oh boy, that was an idea that was proposed a little over two centuries ago by a
01:09:15: Scottish clergyman named Chalmers. It was already, there's a lot of pressure mounting.
01:09:21: People think that belief in evolution in millions of years began with Darwin. But this was 50 years prior to Darwin.
01:09:27: And already in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, people were saying the world is millions of years old.
01:09:34: And the church was starting to capitulate on this. So Chalmers suggested this idea that there was a vast period of time between Genesis 1 .1
01:09:41: and 1 .2. And he said that it says where the earth was without form and void. It says in English, he argues that that really should be rendered.
01:09:50: And the earth became without form and void. And that was some vast destruction that took place at that point.
01:09:56: Maybe the fall of Satan and the war in heaven. Maybe there was even pre -Adamic civilizations, who knows.
01:10:01: But they would dump a huge amount of time. They would put all the fossils and sedimentary layers of rock there. And verse 2 then picks up, or verse 3 really picks up with this recreation of this world.
01:10:13: This idea gained some popularity during the 19th century. What really allowed it to take off was the wedding of that with dispensational theology that was not invented, but certainly was promoted by Schofield.
01:10:28: And that Schofield reference Bible took that with dispensational theology and the gap theory. Most dispensationalists
01:10:34: I know today, the vast majority, have long ago jettisoned the gap theory.
01:10:42: Several reasons wrong with it. There was a man that wrote a book a number of years ago. It was based on a doctoral dissertation from Grace Seminary called
01:10:49: Unformed and Unfilled. And that book is available through many distributors, including Ashes and Genesis.
01:10:55: And it's a refutation of the gap theory. The whole idea that the language there could be read and the earth became empty, void, and empty is not really supported.
01:11:04: And even the term void and empty really is not good. The tohu and bohu, the two
01:11:11: Hebrew words there, really are best rendered unformed and unfilled.
01:11:17: And what it describes there is the fact that God, when he initially made the earth and heaven at the beginning, it was not finished.
01:11:23: If you look at the six days of creation, you see God initially creates things and then he starts shaping and forming.
01:11:29: It's day three before dry land even appears on the earth. It's several days later that animals appeared.
01:11:34: And finally, man, it's not filled yet. It's certainly not completely formed yet. God is still shaping and forming it.
01:11:41: So it's not talking about chaos that was brought on the earth, but instead was talking about just the condition when
01:11:48: God first made it or created it. It was not really finished and completed.
01:11:54: It took another, you know, the end of the creation week to get there. So the long and short of it is, I believe that the gap theory was created to try to explain away billions of years, try to incorporate it into a 6 ,000 year time frame or something.
01:12:11: And I think it does a pretty miserable job. And thankfully, that idea has kind of fallen on hard times. So are you saying that the gap theory was something that was really inherent in the original dispensationalists of the 19th century?
01:12:26: I'm not quite sure about that. Schofield did not originate the dispensational theology.
01:12:33: He was an early advocate and most vocal advocate on it, but he did not originate it. And I'm not sure of the history well enough on that to say whether the gap theory originally was part of that or Schofield brought it in.
01:12:45: I'm not sure about that at all. But it was certainly by 1900 had become part and parcel of the dispensational theology.
01:12:53: Wow, I had not ever heard that before. That's interesting because it's ironic that I know, and believe me,
01:12:59: I have very dear friends who are dispensationalists. I'm not a dispensationalist, but that is not an issue
01:13:05: I divide over. In fact, one of my beloved friends who sponsors this program is a dispensationalist pastor, agrees with me on my
01:13:15: Calvinism, but disagrees with me on other issues. But I happen to know that some dispensationalists
01:13:22: I have met and spoken with actually will blame post -millennialism on evolution.
01:13:30: They will say that the evolutionist theory that started to become popular through Darwin was what gave birth to post -millennialism.
01:13:40: But I think that they misunderstand that eschatological view because post -millennialists don't necessarily believe that things just in a straight line of progression get better and better and better.
01:13:52: But anyway, that's kind of a side. Yeah, I didn't mean to disparage dispensationalists, but my earlier comments,
01:13:59: I think 50, 60 years ago, you would have found gap theory and dispensationalism hand in glove.
01:14:06: But with the modern revival of the modern creation movement, which date back to 1961 with the publication of Genesis Record, I mean, the
01:14:15: Genesis flood by Whitcomb and Morris, it gave people better reasons.
01:14:20: And I think the gap theory began to wane very quickly. And so today,
01:14:26: I know plenty of dispensationalists and very few of them. In fact, none of the ones I know really well and associate with quite a bit believe in the gap theory.
01:14:35: I still occasionally encounter that. And all the gap theorists I know are dispensationalists, but the vast majority of dispensationalists
01:14:42: I know are not gap theorists. So there's been kind of a divorce that's taken place between those two ideas. What can you tell us about John Lennox?
01:14:50: I have enjoyed watching him speak and I think he's quite a brilliant man, although I can't say that I agree with everything he teaches or says, nor do
01:15:02: I know everything he teaches or says. But what's your opinion of John Lennox? Well, that's getting into biology, which is not my field at all, but I'm certainly aware of his work.
01:15:12: And he's very well respected in secular circles and his work with the human genome. He professes salvation,
01:15:19: I don't doubt that, but he also believes in biological evolution, in fact, evolution of all types, you know,
01:15:24: Big Bang, cosmic evolution, geological and biological evolution. As far as I know, he believes in the evolution of mankind as well.
01:15:33: I don't know what he opines on Adam and Eve. I'm going to guess that he probably doesn't think there really was a literal
01:15:39: Adam and Eve. Wow. I'm guessing that's the case. I may be wrong, but if that's the case, then you've got some real problems because sin and our sin nature is, 1
01:15:52: Corinthians really directly ties it back to that, the need for salvation. That's the reason why Genesis is so important in the first few chapters, is because all the foundational doctrines of Christianity are found there, doctrines of salvation are found there, the need of salvation is found there.
01:16:06: And you have to do some pretty fancy dancing around to get around that problem because if there is no
01:16:13: Adam and Eve, even where did sin come from? And what's the nature of death? And I think he believes that death is just one of those things inevitably built into the creation from the very beginning.
01:16:23: So I would have much to disagree with, with Lennox on that. Well, you could also say, if there was no
01:16:30: Adam and Eve, where did Christ come from? Because Adam is in his genealogy.
01:16:36: Yeah, and also Jesus is called the last Adam. And I've often asked people, if the first Adam did not exist, then what does that suggest about the last
01:16:43: Adam? Yeah, absolutely. Now, to speak outside of the scientific realm and more in the realm of your
01:16:55: Christian faith, how far off from a young earth creationist paradigm does somebody have to drift before you would say, this person, although I respect them,
01:17:11: I love them, they're my friend, but I have to say that they would be highly questionable in regard to their
01:17:18: Christian faith. And I might even use the label heretic against them. But how serious a departure would that have to be?
01:17:27: I'm really loathe to go there. You know, the Cardinal Doctrines of Christianity, I think one of them accepts the creation of the world.
01:17:41: And I believe the implication should be the direct act of God creating mankind, but that may be reading too much into it.
01:17:48: But when it comes down to salvation, it's a matter of, you know, how do you treat Jesus Christ? Is he a God with us?
01:17:54: Is he God the Son? Did he die for our sins? Did he rise from the dead?
01:18:00: You know, those basic questions of Scripture, I say would include that inspiration of Scripture.
01:18:06: I think that's important as a Cardinal Doctrine. The age of the earth, that we're very clear in the creation circle, most of us are, that that is not a
01:18:14: Cardinal Doctrine in the sense that if you don't agree with us, then you're not redeemed, you're not saved, you're not born again.
01:18:20: However, you know, having made it very clear, I'm not going to say, well, if you don't agree on this particular view of creation, then you're not born again.
01:18:29: We just alluded to several issues there. You know, if Adam did not exist, the first Adam, then what about the work of the last
01:18:36: Adam? You know, you mentioned about the genealogy of Jesus. Where did he come from? But, you know, where did sin come from? How did it originate?
01:18:41: Why are we sinners? How does this tie in with death? What does that mean? Those are all thorny theological issues.
01:18:49: And I mentioned before, I've encountered some people, particularly in science, who deal with this by not dealing with it.
01:18:57: And I do believe they're motivated by concern there. They want to have scientific respectability, but at the same time, they realize that if they delve into this, and they do take
01:19:09: Scripture very seriously, they might end up on the side of the fence that I'm on, and that's a very uncomfortable prospect for them.
01:19:17: So they deal with it by not dealing with it. And I encounter people all the time who are in that position,
01:19:23: I'm afraid. And I don't want to be too harsh with them. I think they need encouragement and love.
01:19:28: They don't need being preached to, necessarily. I think these people get it. I mean, they realize the tension is there, and they can't have it both ways.
01:19:37: So they deal with it by, again, not dealing with it, which allows them to kind of get away with having it both ways.
01:19:44: So I'm not condemning other people on this. I'm just simply pointing out, I think, number one, the dangers of the ramifications.
01:19:53: If you believe in millions of years, you believe in evolution, then what are the ramifications when it comes to questions dealing with salvation, which is really what it's all about, more than anything else.
01:20:04: And those are the dangers of preachers, and teachers, and leaders. And then individually, you know, come to grips with that, study it, work through it, and see if indeed, you know, scripture does seem to indicate that, yeah, the world's only thousands of years old, not millions, and evolution can't possibly be true.
01:20:21: I think that's the proper approach, rather than trying to decide who's a heretic and who's not. And I have become acquainted with people, both
01:20:33: Protestant and Catholic, who have adopted geocentricism.
01:20:41: And if you could define that for our audience, and give your reaction to that.
01:20:47: Well, we have a chapter in the book on that. We have a final section in the book, what the Bible does not teach, and that's one of them.
01:20:55: This idea has been around a while. The original cosmologies of the past, you know, the Earth as a center, that came out of the ancient world, the what's called the
01:21:03: Ptolemaic model, the idea that the planets go on little circles called epicycles, and they in turn go around the larger circle around the
01:21:11: Earth. The sun and the moon do the same thing. And this model was the most successful theory in the history of science.
01:21:20: In terms of longevity, it lasted for 15 centuries. It was finally rejected about 400 years ago.
01:21:26: It wasn't that the problem, the problem wasn't that it didn't work, it did, but they kept adding little gears, little wheels, little epicycles to make it agree with reality.
01:21:35: Whenever there was a discrepancy between the theory and the actual observations, they just added more little gears to make it work and continue making it work.
01:21:43: So 400 years ago, they began to realize this is a very complicated system. Nature probably ought to be simpler than that, and they abandoned it in terms of what we call the heliocentric theory, the idea that the
01:21:54: Earth is just one of several planets orbiting the sun. Unfortunately, the Roman Catholic Church bet on the wrong horse.
01:22:02: They opposed Galileo four centuries ago, and incidentally, the story of Galileo is badly garbled.
01:22:10: Most of what most people know about Galileo is not really true, the whole Galileo affair. We could talk a lot about that, but the point is, is that it left egg on their faces and they've apologized profusely in more recent years over the whole incident four centuries ago.
01:22:26: Unfortunately, that then has been spun into this idea that you creationists are opposed to science, you're sticking your religion where it doesn't belong and so forth, and that's the wrong lesson to draw entirely from this.
01:22:38: But then in the last 40 years or so, we've had some creationists who have decided that maybe the
01:22:46: Roman Catholic Church was right after all, that maybe we shouldn't have been so quick to abandon the geocentric theory.
01:22:54: They instead, instead of the Ptolemaic model, they want to substitute what's called the Ticonic model, named after Tycho Brahe, a famous Danish astronomer four centuries ago, and he supposed that the
01:23:06: Earth didn't orbit the Sun, but the other planets did, and then the Sun orbited the
01:23:13: Earth carrying the planets with it, and other planets, I should say, with it. And this is an odd model, it's just basically a chorded transformation from the
01:23:24: Sun to the Earth, and it's kind of geocentrism by definition.
01:23:30: They argue in some very sophisticated way that space is somehow connected to the Earth, and even though the
01:23:36: Earth does orbit the Sun, it carries space with it, so basically it stays stationary with respect to space, which seems to be an awful lot of trouble to go to salvage the idea that the
01:23:47: Earth isn't moving. They use some of the old arguments the Roman Catholic Church may have used against Galileo about certain
01:23:53: Old Testament passages that talk about the Earth not being moved, it's stable, and Joshua's long day, the
01:24:00: Earth, not the Earth being caused to stand still, but the Sun and the Moon, and that's their argument, and I've been very critical of that over the years, and that's why we included a chapter on that.
01:24:12: And also wrapped up in that is belief in a flat Earth. Believe it or not, that has become a big thing in the last...
01:24:22: I've seen the websites, and I've wondered, is this a practical joke? No, well,
01:24:28: I think some of the people there are actually having fun at other people's expense. They really, I think, they're just having a jolly good time, but unfortunately,
01:24:37: I've detected in the last year many Christians being sucked up into this, and I wish, now, one thing,
01:24:42: I could change my book. I wish I would have been a little more forcible about this, because since I put the book to bed, as it were, back in the spring,
01:24:49: I've seen this thing just blow up. Even today, I had some email interactions with some people on this very question, and you're laughing, and I look at it,
01:24:58: I shake my head, but this is a growing threat within the creation movement, or within the Christian movement, I should say.
01:25:04: People are really falling for this stuff, and it's really sad, and I view it as a great threat to us.
01:25:12: Now, one of the individuals that I was mentioning, who is an advocate of geocentrism,
01:25:21: I think I added an extra syllable in there before when I tried to pronounce it, but geocentrism is
01:25:29: Dr. Robert St. Genes, who is a Roman Catholic apologist. He is on the polar opposite end of the spectrum from me when it comes to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I've arranged debates with Dr.
01:25:44: James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a fellow Reformed Baptist and historic
01:25:51: Protestant and scholar and theologian and apologist, but Dr.
01:25:58: St. Genes, over the years, has become more and more alienated by his colleagues in Roman Catholic apologetics because he has strongly adopted and advocated the geocentricism or geocentrism view of cosmology, and he actually is a part of the production of a movie about it, and I just was curious if you've seen that movie.
01:26:25: I've seen parts of it. It's called The Principle, talking about the Copernican principle. St. Genes is a recent convert to this.
01:26:35: He's not the originator of it. There's a guy named Jerry Buow who really was carrying the candle for that for quite a bit, but he's done it completely, and he put forth this movie about a year or two ago.
01:26:47: It's written quite a bit. He's criticized some of my thing out there. I've seen on the internet some of his criticisms of my work.
01:26:56: I'm just really kind of taken aback by his resume. He was
01:27:02: Protestant for a while, went to Protestant schools, and then he became a Roman Catholic.
01:27:08: Here he is. The Roman Catholic Church is a hierarchical religion.
01:27:14: You're supposed to accept what the pope and the authorities of the church say, and they abandoned the geocentric theory a long time ago.
01:27:25: So if a person truly understands Roman Catholicism, I don't understand how in the world you can swim upstream if the church has officially declared that geocentrism is dead and the truth is heliocentrism, and they have done that, then why would a
01:27:41: Roman Catholic apologist of all people start arguing that the Roman Catholic Church was wrong about that?
01:27:47: That doesn't make any sense to me. Well, I know that from having a lot of discussions with Bob St.
01:27:53: Genes and other Roman Catholics, they differ on what is viewed as dogmatic versus things that are doctrine and discipline and tradition that is not binding, and they would view this as not dogmatic.
01:28:15: It wasn't something that the the papacy declared ex cathedra, that you must abandon or deny geocentrism in order to be a faithful Catholic.
01:28:28: So Robert St. Genes believes that he is within the boundaries of faithful Catholicism when he opposes the papacy on a number of things that the papacy has not declared ex cathedra.
01:28:43: In fact, he is no fan, as you might imagine, of Pope Francis. And actually, even though I have a lot of disagreement with Bob, obviously
01:28:54: I organize debates against him and his views on very important theological issues.
01:29:02: I admire him, at least, for his courage of conviction because he actually was fired from EWTN, one of the more well -known
01:29:11: Catholic television networks, for criticizing Pope John Paul II when he was still alive over liberalism and so on.
01:29:21: So, but that's all. I mean, Bob's not here to explain himself, but that's where I know that he would probably come from.
01:29:28: That this is not an ex cathedra declared dogma that Roman Catholics, to be faithful, must abandon geocentrism.
01:29:37: Yeah. Again, he is a fairly recent participant in this movement, and he's become the leader, it seems like.
01:29:45: I guess probably because of his presence on the internet, on YouTube, and with this documentary that he did.
01:29:52: Again, Jerry Boal was the guy who was really a leader on that for a long time.
01:29:57: You don't hear much about him anymore. It's mostly a sungenus now out there. Well, we have to go to our final break right now, and if you'd like to join us before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
01:30:11: chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.
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01:36:47: Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back.
01:36:58: This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in our show today for the last 90 minutes, our guest has been a wonderful, wonderful guest.
01:37:08: I think I'd like to have him back on a lot more frequently. In fact, I don't think that. I know that. I hope he can join us on many more occasions in the future.
01:37:15: But Dr. Danny R. Faulkner and we're discussing his book, The Created Cosmos, What the
01:37:21: Bible Reveals About Astronomy. And if you'd like to join us our email address is
01:37:27: ChrisArnzen at gmail .com ChrisArnzen at gmail .com Somebody writing in with an alias,
01:37:35: Lam Lam doesn't have a question, but she just says, I just loved the gentleness of Dr.
01:37:41: Danny Faulkner. Say thanks to him. And I'm wondering, what about my gentleness,
01:37:48: Lam Lam? Don't I have gentleness? But anyway.
01:37:55: Now let's go a little bit more into the section of the book, Astronomical Questions in the
01:38:03: Bible, How Scripture Confronts Recent Questions about Astronomy. Okay.
01:38:08: That section has several chapters in it. And these are questions that people have.
01:38:15: One is the light travel time problem, which we discussed in the first hour. Another one is
01:38:21: AT. We talked about that, I believe, already. And then the other chapter deals with this idea that many
01:38:27: Christians seem to have that the year was once 360 days long.
01:38:33: That's a very common belief among a lot of creationists today, recent creationists.
01:38:39: And I've investigated it thoroughly, and I find it really wanting tremendously. So I'm really skeptical of that claim.
01:38:49: And well, let's finally go into a little bit more about astronomy and distortions of the
01:38:56: Bible, misconceptions of what Scripture teaches about astronomy. Well, I have four chapters in that, but actually two items that I talk, we've already mentioned one of them, one of them being the idea of flat
01:39:07: Earth and geocentrism. And again, I don't believe the Bible teaches either one of those.
01:39:13: But then the last three chapters of the book is a rather expensive discussion of what people call the gospel and the stars.
01:39:19: This is the idea that there was originally a gospel message given in the constellations and star names, maybe given by God directly or developed by Adam or his son
01:39:30: Seth. And then these things were transmitted down, but eventually became perverted and garbled and turned into what we know as astrology and the lore of all the different constellations in the sky.
01:39:42: I first encountered this concept more than 35 years ago, and I've studied it extensively ever since.
01:39:48: And I sometimes wonder if I know more about the subject than anybody living here, because I've read everything I can find on it.
01:39:54: And I've found numerous problems with it. And I detail those problems with the pretty much in the last three chapters of the book.
01:40:06: And Lam Lam from Valley Stream, Long Island, New York, who gave you that compliment earlier, does actually have a question.
01:40:14: Okay. And I have to enlarge it because I'm going blind. And the font of this email is very small.
01:40:23: In our family, we all love to look at the sky, the moon and the stars in it, for it really proclaims the greatness of our
01:40:31: God. Just a few days ago, the children examined or exclaimed that the solar system is amazing, but don't know how,
01:40:39: I'm sorry, but don't know what to do with the knowledge of this galaxy in terms of fulfilling the
01:40:44: Great Commission. In order to help keep young adults to understand and explore what other options
01:40:51: God might have in store for them, we would love to ask Dr. Danny R. Faulkner, what is his comment from an astronomy's astrophysics perspective on this?
01:41:04: I strongly believe that communicating the truth as revealed in the science realm to the adult's generation is much needed.
01:41:14: However, I also think that the root of ignorance of the truth in the scripture is rooted in the public education system.
01:41:24: Thus, communicating to the school age children are equally important. Don't know if in the future that would be possible to see the creation research and the like to invest and expand in the direction of communication of the truth to young ones.
01:41:46: Well, that's a difficult task. As you pointed out, the public schools particularly are really owned by the secular worldview.
01:41:56: That wasn't so much the case when I was growing up in the 60s. Already there were changes, dramatic changes taking place, but it seems like we've had a complete collapse of any kind of Christian influence in society in general and it's reflected in the schools today.
01:42:10: And, you know, people used to not talk about worldview very much. Christians, when
01:42:16: I was growing up, it was never discussed, and I think it's because we had the luxury of living in a society that largely reflected a
01:42:23: Christian worldview. Even though it was a dramatically changing force, we didn't really see that too much.
01:42:30: Now we have to go to extraordinary lengths to educate our young people. Even if they go to home school or they go to a
01:42:36: Christian school, there are influences out there in popular culture all over the place.
01:42:42: And I don't think we're called to be cloistered people. So that we're away from society.
01:42:48: But on the other hand, we need to protect our families and our young people. And they need to be in the world, but not of the world, as Jesus told us.
01:42:57: And that's a tricky balance. And we need to start by making sure Christian folks, our young people in our churches really are grounded well in the
01:43:07: Bible and the authority of scripture, have a biblical worldview, and then they can take that into the world.
01:43:13: And that's a tricky proposition. It really is. It takes hard work. It takes study. It takes dedication.
01:43:19: You need resources. You need help. That's the reason why different creation support ministries such as Antis and Genesis exist.
01:43:27: We have a vast website with all sorts of resources, answering questions people have. There are other organizations who are also part of the
01:43:35: Creation Research Society. We have a website called assemblycreationresearch .org.
01:43:40: We have resources there too. Many of them free articles. Some things are products you can buy.
01:43:45: They're just books and DVDs and such. But we have a lot of downloadable things that answer all sorts of questions.
01:43:52: So I can't really emphasize enough the resources that are both free and the costs that are available to people to help develop and build and maintain this worldview within the church and also shine it out there into the world.
01:44:07: I'm a biased, I may be, because I'm an astronomer, but I do believe astronomy is a unique position to do all that because Psalm 19 tells us that heaven's declared
01:44:17: God's glory. And I think that's a good segue. It's a good way to introduce people to the fact that we have a
01:44:23: Creator. Well, thank you very much, Lam Lam, for submitting that question. And we have
01:44:30: B .B. in Cumberland County who says, you were discussing earlier the gospel in the stars.
01:44:38: I remember when the late Dr. D. James Kennedy had developed a view similar to that, if not exactly like that, and wrote about it and got some of his friends upset with him.
01:44:53: I loved and still love Dr. Kennedy and his writings and miss him dearly now that he is with the
01:45:00: Lord for eternity. He has been of phenomenal support and encouragement to my own understanding of the scriptures and have learned much from him.
01:45:14: But did he ever abandon that view that he unfortunately appeared to develop?
01:45:21: To my knowledge, I don't believe he ever did. Well, I gather he, about 30 years ago, he preached a series of sermons there in his church,
01:45:30: Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. And then he had a series of audio sermons that were then transcribed into the book that he wrote on it.
01:45:38: He drew heavily upon Bollinger's book on it. He also referenced
01:45:44: Seitz's work, which is a little less known. Bollinger's the best known, but both Bollinger and Seitz written late 19th century are secondary sources.
01:45:51: The original source was Francis Rolleston, who published 150 years ago. And I would consider
01:45:56: Kennedy's work a tertiary source on all this because he referred back to others on that.
01:46:03: And again, I have tremendous respect for Dr. Kennedy and the work he did.
01:46:09: He was a great man in my estimation, but all great men have their lapses at points.
01:46:15: And I think this is one of his, one of his few that he had. I don't think he could have been any more wrong about it.
01:46:21: And I had not heard that some people were upset with him, supporters were upset with him. I'm kind of encouraging to hear that.
01:46:27: But again, as far as I know, he never abandoned that belief. Oh, yeah. I remember when he first came out with it, that people who are, who were his theological peers and colleagues,
01:46:39: I don't mean colleagues within his ministry. I mean, you know, people who would have spoken with him at conferences and things like that, that were very, very upset about it and confronted him on it and so on.
01:46:54: Well, you know, there are many people who are really into this. They, the cherished notion, and the longer you believe that, the more difficult it is to disambiguate yourself of that.
01:47:04: I think the late, great Henry Morris was fond of it. He didn't really talk about it much. There are a couple of places toward the end of some of his longer books where he mentioned it, kind of the possibility, but you'd have to read between the lines to know how much he really liked it or not.
01:47:18: He didn't, he wasn't nearly as forceful about it as Kennedy was in his writings. So I encounter people from time to time who really find it comforting,
01:47:27: I guess, or enjoy it. But I've had a lot of discussions with people. It's kind of frustrating to kind of get people to look at it another way, and maybe consider the possibility that they've been misled in all of this.
01:47:39: We have Jeff in Clinton Township, Michigan, who asks, why aren't those pastors and teachers who teach anything other than a literal six -day creation week considered false teachers?
01:47:54: Well, I'm certain there are people that consider them false teachers because there are people who think that if you have a beard and a mustache, that you're a false teacher.
01:48:03: So there are some, you know, interesting views out there. Oh, careful.
01:48:08: I have both a beard and a mustache. I'm not saying that I hold to that view. Well, I certainly understand, and I sympathize, and I attempted myself to go there.
01:48:19: But again, you know, when you come down to it, looking at the New Testament particularly, what are the essential doctrines of Christianity?
01:48:26: What must a person believe in order to be born again? And I don't find the age of the earth there.
01:48:33: Again, you do have to look at the fruit, as it were, of teaching millions of years, the problems we've already outlined earlier in our discussion today.
01:48:44: And, you know, at some point, you got to realize that this is going to cause problems for people and can lead people astray.
01:48:51: Now, if you want to say that then is a hallmark or earmark of a false teacher, then so be it.
01:48:59: I'm loath to go there, but I do want to call people to look at these teachings and see, is it really consistent?
01:49:07: Think it through. What are the ramifications? And I think you'll come, if you're really seriously and biblically examine it, you'll realize that it leads to problems.
01:49:17: But, you know, all of us are wrong at some point. Even you and I, believe it or not, are wrong on some things.
01:49:23: Hey, speak for yourself. I believe, I know, but if I knew where I was wrong,
01:49:29: I would want to change my mind. And I have, by the way, changed my mind on some thinking. The last two years, I've changed my mind on what the
01:49:35: Rakhia of day two was all about. My new thinking is found in this book. So I'm capable of changing my mind and I try to keep an open mind about these things.
01:49:46: So we're all wrong about different things. And I think maybe we need to be careful in throwing around the term false teacher, throwing around the word, the
01:49:56: H word, heretic. Again, I'm loathe to do that. And I may fail to call some people false teachers or heretics who truly are.
01:50:04: But I'm very careful not to do that. I want to reserve those terms for what people who really deserve to be called that.
01:50:12: Well, I sure hope that you don't write that about me in your blog after the show's over. I'll think about it.
01:50:20: And of course, you have people like all of us who have blind spots because there have been great theologians who have contributed much to our understanding of scripture who had flaws and had errors.
01:50:35: Like even B .B. Warfield, the great Princeton divine, was affected by the theory of evolution and all this stuff.
01:50:46: And I don't think he ever became a loud, full -throated advocate for it.
01:50:51: But he was seemingly thinking that it was not all that in conflict with scripture at one point anyway.
01:51:01: And I think some of the people who learned under him and the people who learned under them have actually taken it much farther.
01:51:07: That's the real danger there. Warfield's a perfect example. He himself kind of waffled on that one and he didn't see a problem.
01:51:16: But it did bear fruit a generation or two later. And another theologian that we were applauding as a great hero of the faith yesterday with my dear friend or wonderful guest of mine,
01:51:32: Dr. George Grant, was Thomas Chalmers. Was that Thomas Chalmers you were speaking of?
01:51:40: Chalmers, that would be the Scotsman who came up with the gap theory. Yeah, is that the same theologian that I'm speaking of,
01:51:47: Thomas Chalmers? I think so, yeah. That was 1814. Is that the time frame of Chalmers you're thinking of?
01:51:52: Yeah, I believe so, yeah. Same guy. Look, I mentioned the Gospel of the Stars earlier.
01:51:58: One of the main sources most people have on that is E. W. Bollinger. And E.
01:52:05: W. Bollinger wrote some good stuff and he's even well -read today and well -respected. And he wrote some great stuff, but his
01:52:11: Gospel of the Stars wasn't one of them. It was his rubbish that he wrote. He wrote a couple of bad things and that was it.
01:52:16: So, excellent examples. We all have feet of clay at some point. Yeah, and in fact, I know an expert on the
01:52:23: Puritans who cherishes a handful of the writings of Richard Baxter, the
01:52:32: Puritan, especially the Reformed pastor and a couple of others. But he said that a lot of Baxter...
01:52:39: This is one of the foremost experts on the Puritan era alive today who says that most of Richard Baxter's stuff is not worthy of reading.
01:52:50: But so, you know, you just have this thing that we have to deal with on this planet before we are in glory with Christ, that we are going to have disagreements, we're all going to have some kind of blind spots because of sin and our fallibility and so on.
01:53:08: I'd like you to close with at least a handful of what you would think are the strongest scientific arguments against an old earth.
01:53:20: Well, one, I think, is what we call the tidal evolution of the earth -moon system. Most people are familiar with the tides that the moon is primarily responsible for each day, two highs and two low tides.
01:53:31: But there's some other subtle things going on. One of them is that it causes the earth's rotation to gradually slow and it causes the moon distance to gradually increase, thus increasing the length of the month.
01:53:44: And we've actually measured the rate at which this is going on. We've done this by looking at historical eclipse data for the rotation period of the earth.
01:53:52: They're from the current position of the moon and we can figure out where it should have been in the past. And it's displaced systematically in longitude.
01:53:59: And from historical records, we can deduce the rate at which the earth's rotation is increasing. And also, we've left reflectors on the surface of the moon back 45 years ago in the
01:54:09: Apollo program. They bounce laser beams off those and measure the distance of the moon very precisely.
01:54:15: It's moving away at a rate of like four centimeters. It's about an inch and a half or inch and two -thirds a year. That's remarkably small.
01:54:22: And over thousands of years, not a problem. But if you extrapolate into the past, you have a big problem.
01:54:28: You see, we know the physics involved. We can take the current rate, apply the physics and figure out where the moon should have been in the past.
01:54:36: And if you go back a billion years ago, you have a problem because you now should have mile -high tides on the earth.
01:54:42: And a little earlier than that, the moon and the earth would have been in contact. But really, before that would have happened, you would have had the moon being shredded apart by the very strong tidal effects of the earth.
01:54:54: And so we know that the moon couldn't be orbiting the earth for much more than a billion years.
01:55:01: Yet, nearly everybody seems to think the moon's been doing that for four and a half billion years. And it would seem that this would rule that out entirely.
01:55:10: Another argument is the magnetic field of the earth. It's decaying. We've been measuring it for 170 years or more, maybe 180 years now.
01:55:18: And it's getting weaker and weaker. And we think we understand the mechanism whether by the magnetic field is generated inside the core of the earth.
01:55:27: And we would expect decay, which is exactly what we see. And if you take this into the past, you realize that even just tens of thousands of years ago, you have ridiculously high levels of the magnetic field that could not be sustained.
01:55:40: Again, suggesting the earth is far less than even a million years.
01:55:46: We have other evidences around the solar system. We have three of the large, what we call the
01:55:54: Jovian planets, three of the four actually give off twice as much energy than they receive from the sun.
01:56:01: And if the world's billions of years old, it can't be primordial heat. They would have shed that heat a long time ago.
01:56:07: Radioactive sources don't seem to work. They haven't a clue what's causing that heat to be there.
01:56:14: But you see, if it's only thousands of years old, then they could certainly have been created somewhat warm or even could have some settling take place, which would generate that heat.
01:56:24: We find a satellite of Jupiter EO is volcanically active. It's far more volcanically active than the earth is by any stretch.
01:56:34: And we've seen dozens of volcanoes erupting. We've seen huge changes on the surface over just over a couple of years time.
01:56:41: So very volcanically active, but why does it have heat? It doesn't have enough radioactive materials inside to be heating it.
01:56:48: Most astronomers think that it's just tidal flexing caused by its orbit around Jupiter, very closely to Jupiter.
01:56:54: It turns out that mechanism doesn't work. We have comets in the solar system, and these comets are very flimsy.
01:57:01: They have several mechanisms, at least three by which comets meet an early demise. And again, suggesting the universe is far younger than most people think.
01:57:11: Otherwise, we wouldn't have any comets left. To solve this problem, they hypothesize a Kuiper belt for short -period comets and an
01:57:17: Oort cloud for long -period comets. The Oort cloud's never been observed, so it's hardly scientific.
01:57:23: The Kuiper belt, a little more ambiguous. There are some objects orbiting the sun about where they ought to be if the
01:57:30: Kuiper belt exists, but there are numerous problems with that interpretation. So I think they're still lacking a source for comets if the solar system really is four and a half billion years.
01:57:42: So the sun, we think it's getting its power from a nuclear fusion deep in its core, and we have evidence to support that contention.
01:57:50: But according to the theory, I don't understand how that works. The sun should have been much fainter in the past, and it should have brightened over the years.
01:57:59: In fact, since life supposedly arose on the Earth three and a half billion years ago, the sun would have brightened by 25%.
01:58:06: I've run the numbers. It indicates that the temperature of the Earth would have increased in that period of time by 17
01:58:13: Celsius. The average temperature of the Earth today is around 15 Celsius. So the average temperature back then when life supposedly began was only negative two, which at real temperatures, like 28 degrees
01:58:25: Fahrenheit, that would have resulted in Earth that was completely frozen, locked up in ice. And that clearly was not the case.
01:58:34: Nobody believes that. They believe the Earth has maintained a somewhat constant temperature with some fluctuations for those three and a half billion years.
01:58:41: So why was the Earth so much warmer in the past than it should have been? Big mystery. They call that the early faint sun paradox.
01:58:48: And they've tried to resolve that many ways. All of them fail, I think. Well, we're out of time, and I'd love to have you back as soon as possible.
01:58:56: If you could hang out on the phone there when we go off the air, I'd like to discuss booking another interview with you.
01:59:03: Okay, I'd be glad to. And I know that the website for Danny Faulkner and Answers in Genesis is answersingenesis .org.
01:59:11: Do you have any other contact information that you care to share? No, that's good enough. If people want to get a hold of me, they can get a hold of me there through Answers in Genesis.
01:59:20: Answersingenesis .org. I want to thank you so much. I want to thank everybody for taking the time for writing in and with great questions, keeping the program at such a lively pace.
01:59:33: I want to thank all of you who listen to the program and support the program. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater