Debbie Spencer the Mom Apologist

Creation Fellowship

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February 12, 2021

00:00: And from mom apologists Debbie Spencer, and she's going to be talking to us about hope in these turbulent times.
00:06: I have a quick little bio on her. So let me read it. Debbie's a wife and mother of four sons she homeschooled to for now adult sons from first grade.
00:16: She was hardly idle while taking on the task of homeschooling during that time she completed a master's degree in Christian education and a master's degree in biblical apologetics from the
00:26: Institute of Creation Research. God has given Debbie a heart to educate parents and students about the facts of the
00:32: Bible and the confidence they can have from knowing it's true. She began an apologetics
00:37: Academy to reach out to parents and teachers so that they can know what the Bible really says, and then teach it to the young people diligently.
00:46: As administrator of the Academy of Christian apologetics she is determined to help Christians understand the truth and ultimately share the good news with others.
00:54: Debbie now resides in Tennessee with her husband and the scripture to go with that is my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,
01:03: Hosea four, six, and that that has never been more true. Yeah, that makes my heartache thinking about that, you know,
01:14: Oh yeah. Yes. Okay, um, did you want me to go ahead and get started.
01:20: Go ahead and get started. Okay, I'm just going to do a PowerPoint. So you're that's what you're going to see instead of me.
01:27: So I'll go ahead and get that going. Okay, so can you see it.
01:38: Okay. Yes. Okay, great. So, um, my name is
01:44: Debbie Spencer and I will be talking about the hope of creation. First of all,
01:50: I want to thank you all so much for inviting me to come Um, I really think it's awesome that you get together and share with like minded people all that is going on.
02:01: And I'm sure you share about new stuff. I actually had speak and be spoken before at the
02:09: Creation Museum in Santee a couple years ago I did
02:14: Mother's Day tea, a couple years in a row, and I was doing apologetics for moms.
02:23: So as you mentioned earlier, I'm a wife and a mother of four sons plus one daughter in law.
02:31: So I finally got a girl. I'm happy about that. And I live in beautiful eastern
02:36: Tennessee, but I'm going to be moving back to California to get closer to my kids.
02:43: I know everybody is leaving California. I'm kind of going against the culture which you know as Christians, I guess we kind of got
02:50: Got to get used to that anyways is going against the culture. So, um, a few years back.
02:59: I started an academy for moms, but my focus recently has been on an online
03:08: Christian school. I started this God put it on my heart for several years now that there
03:13: Needs to be better options than public school or public online school or whatever there is.
03:20: So, um, I went ahead and started an online
03:25: Christian school which basically offers Christian curriculum. At this point, it's just online and sometime in the future.
03:34: I hope to have live classes and you can look at the website at Smoky Mountain CS .com
03:44: I also have a Facebook page that is forward slash
03:49: AC apologetics and I don't work on it as much, but I have a website.
03:57: That was for Academy of Christian apologetics for moms. Now it's just a wick site.
04:03: So it's Spencer six dot dot wick site .com forward slash mom's blog.
04:12: So how this all started was as a homeschool mom and as a
04:17: Christian, there were a lot of questions that I felt like I couldn't answer.
04:24: And then I wondered, how was I going to teach my kids about it if I didn't have the answers myself.
04:31: I also knew that if I felt that way, then there had to be other moms that felt that way too.
04:39: And so I wanted to be able to teach the other moms so that they themselves could teach their kids.
04:46: And that began my journey to find the truth. And as you had mentioned earlier,
04:53: I went on and studied and got a master's in Christian education, then
04:59: I went on to specifically deal with biblical apologetics.
05:05: And then my goal was to equip the moms to educate them and also to encourage them.
05:13: And I kind of did it in a little bit more of a layman's term or layman's way of doing it, rather than just being all scientific.
05:24: So I started the Academy and my heart was to help moms be confident in the truth of the
05:32: Bible and know that it wasn't just a bunch of made up stories. And we're constantly hearing things on TV against the
05:42: Bible, the Bible is foolish, the Bible is crazy, you know, all kinds of things.
05:48: So And also, a lot of that is affecting our youth.
05:53: Of course, it has a lot to do with what they're being taught in school, as far as evolution and all that.
06:00: But as many of you know that young people are deciding that they really don't need church anymore.
06:06: And that breaks my heart. Somewhere there's got to be some kind of disconnect in the churches or in the families.
06:16: And maybe they're just not teaching that the facts of the Bible are true. They're not prioritizing it.
06:23: I'm not sure what is happening, but I just know that a lot of kids are growing up without knowing the facts.
06:30: And knowing what they believe in and why they believe in it. So I would research the information, you know, that I would hear people asking about or talking about.
06:42: I would take what I learned and put it into kind of bite sized pieces. So that a busy parent would easily be able to ingest it and then ultimately pass the information on to their kids or anybody else.
06:59: So, um, a lot of people today are being influenced by a
07:06: Christianity and I think Rabbi Zacharias said this, but I can't be sure, but I just love how he talks about Excuse me, a
07:16: Christianity that is devoid of conviction and apologetic answers.
07:22: And I was like, yes, that's what's missing. So, um, Those who are growing up with that, they have doubts and those doubts, unfortunately, many times are being fed by those who are in authority.
07:38: Whether they're in the media authority or the government authority, school authority, any kind of authority.
07:45: But in general, there's a great opposition towards Christianity.
07:51: There might even be some Christians who mean well, but yet they're compromising the reality or the facts.
08:00: So I feel like we need to reach out to them, whether it's our kids, someone else's kids, or maybe it's just other women or men that we're talking to.
08:11: So we need to listen to them and also be able to give a reason for our
08:18: Christian hope, or they may just You know, leave the faith. Maybe they'll never come to a church, never, never see a church at all.
08:28: So I feel like as Christians, we have some answers in that we can help them and we can encourage them.
08:38: So this presentation is a basic one. It's not a full on scientific presentation.
08:47: But what God put on my heart was to present this in a way that is simple enough for you or for anybody to be able to share with other
08:55: Christians who maybe are doubting a recent creation. Maybe they've heard about creation, but they believe in a theistic evolution or something, or theistic creation.
09:08: I'm sorry. So, yeah, I guess I meant theistic evolution, sorry, because of what they've been taught over the years about evolution.
09:19: And when you hear it over and over as fact, many times people believe it. So maybe they just don't know that much about the
09:28: Bible, but I think it's, again, it's our job as Christians, when we know this stuff, to be able to share it and pass it on.
09:35: Because we have facts. I mean, we're not making up stories. We're not, you know, just creating crazy things.
09:45: We have the Bible that is God's word and it's true and it's consistent and it's factual.
09:54: So with what's going on in the world, the lies, deceitfulness, conflict, fear and anger and other stuff, people need hope and they need truth.
10:06: And it's really hard to find that now, especially if you watch the news at all.
10:12: I mean, I don't even watch the news anymore because it just makes me anxious. It's just a bunch of bad stuff.
10:19: There's really nothing positive on the news anymore. So again, you know, we can all use a little bit of hope and definitely truth, but ultimately as Christians, we do have that hope.
10:32: We have the answers because we have our hope in Christ and we have our answers because we have the word of God.
10:40: But even Christians are struggling to find hope right now. It's important for us to be able to be confident in knowing that God's word is true.
10:54: And in knowing that, we need to know how it impacts our way of thinking and how we live.
11:01: We can see that when we follow God's truths, we have peace. We know that.
11:07: I'm sure many of you have experienced God's peace. When we live as the world lives, though, we have doubt and chaos and discouragement.
11:16: And we see a lot of that right now, especially with the COVID thing. People are really discouraged and there's a lot of chaos.
11:26: So I'd like to show that we can find hope and we can be confident in believing in a young earth creation because of what's written in Scripture.
11:39: I'm going to talk about first the hope of creation. Then the world pulls us away from truth.
11:47: Then we can be sure that the creation account and God's word is true. And lastly, this assurance brings hope and hope anchors our soul.
12:02: OK, so the hope of creation. Our thought process makes a difference.
12:10: What we think and feel can become what we believe. What we believe becomes how we act.
12:18: Showing the hope of creation will bring about hopeful thoughts and can change the way that we live and act.
12:26: And then again, if we're able to show others the hope of creation, the hope of knowing that creation is fact, it's true.
12:36: Then that can bring about hopeful thoughts and others and change the way they act and live.
12:43: But when we compromise and believe as the world believes, we live the way the world lives and that's without hope.
12:55: So when we believe in creation, our thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions all move towards giving value to life.
13:07: And life has value because God created life. So we value life everywhere from the womb to the grave.
13:16: We think life is important because God created it. But if we believe in evolution, our thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions are based on that.
13:32: And we have a completely different view. In fact, there's no value of life.
13:38: And again, you can see how that affects day -to -day life when there's no value.
13:46: There's abortions. There's murder. There's abuse.
13:57: And so how we think and what we believe in affects how we live and how we act.
14:04: Roman 5 .5 says, Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the
14:16: Holy Spirit who was given to us. So the hope that we have is not fairy tales, but it's a hope in truth.
14:27: And what we put our hope in really does matter. Our hope in God is worthy because he is faithful.
14:37: And we can be sure of that because in Hebrews 6, it says, God has bound himself with an oath so that those who receive the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind.
14:56: So again, he wants us to be perfectly sure. He wants us to believe in it.
15:03: And so what is the promise that it's talking about? It's talking about the promise of salvation through Christ.
15:11: This was the promise in Genesis 3 when God warned Satan of the coming of the seed that could bruise
15:19: Satan's head or the serpent's head. And the seed, of course, was
15:24: Christ. And this is simple enough that we can share that with others, too.
15:32: Now, that promise was that there would be salvation from the consequences of sin that began in the garden.
15:40: And that's something that people can relate to even now with all that's going on.
15:46: They have this inner understanding, I believe, of right and wrong, not as if the
15:55: Holy Spirit is in them. But I believe God kind of hardwired us to know that.
16:02: And so when they know about sin or when they know they're doing something wrong, we can share with them about that.
16:12: So there's God's promise in the garden. Then there's going to be people who reject it, of course.
16:24: Since the creation of man, sin has been a temptation to all of us, except Christ, of course.
16:32: We've sinned and we've come short of the glory of God. That is why we need to be saved.
16:40: We can't come before God and spend eternity with him on our own account.
16:47: We need a Savior. It has to be done through Christ. All of the
16:53: Bible has to be true, though, for this all to work. The story of Christ and salvation is throughout the entire
17:04: Bible. As I said, it began in Genesis. It began at the beginning and goes through the entire
17:11: Bible. So we can't accept the New Testament without accepting the
17:17: Old Testament, because there are people who will not accept the Old Testament, and they only believe the
17:24: New Testament. Well, there's also, we cannot accept parts of the
17:30: Bible without accepting all of it. Some people will pick and choose parts of the
17:36: Bible that they want to believe and that they don't want to believe. There are people who will believe the
17:44: Bible, or say they believe the Bible, yet will not believe the creation account.
17:51: They're kind of choosing what they want to believe and what they don't want to believe. So the
17:58: Bible begins with Genesis and with the creation of the universe. We know that God created something out of nothing, that he was the only one that is able to do that, because basically, something cannot be created from nothing if you leave
18:20: God out of the picture. Once God is in the picture, we know that he is the creator.
18:27: He is the one that was able to do that. God is everlasting, so he existed before creation.
18:39: So when Paul was dealing with non -Jews, he spoke to them, and he was starting by establishing the foundation that God was the creator.
18:52: And he said, For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship,
18:59: I also found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God.
19:05: Therefore, what you made in ignorance I proclaim to you. So then this is where he brings it back.
19:12: He says, The God who made the world and all things in it, since he is
19:19: Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he served by human hands.
19:28: Though he needed nothing, though as if he needed anything, since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things, and he made from one man, which is
19:43: Adam, every nation of mankind to live in all the face of the earth, and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of the habitation.
19:54: So God's word is the foundation of our Christianity, and we need to believe that it's true, and we need to know that it is true.
20:05: In it, we can learn about the human condition, our need for salvation,
20:11: God's plan through Christ, as I spoke earlier, was weaved throughout the entire
20:17: Bible, and the everlasting joy that awaits those who trust in Jesus, and more.
20:24: So that everlasting joy that awaits those who trust in Jesus, that is our hope, and that's what you can share with other people.
20:33: Again, and you can focus on supporting the facts of creation.
20:41: So Christ is our cornerstone, and he's our foundation. So we also find answers to life's questions.
20:52: Where did we come from? Why is there evil in this world? Where does human nature come from?
21:00: How was the earth created? Why do I feel sad in my heart? What happens after death?
21:06: What am I here for? Who is God? How do I find fulfillment?
21:12: And how do I know what is right or wrong? And again, you can point your friends, your family, your kids, you can point them all to the
21:22: Bible, because the Bible has answers to all of this. So we have the answers, and it's in a book, and the book was written inspired by God.
21:42: So here's a little story. Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
21:52: Now, I don't think he's Christian, I'm not sure, but anyways, he appeared on the
21:59: Oprah Winfrey Show one day, and I thought this was really a good word picture.
22:05: He asked the studio audience to close their eyes and point north. When they opened their eyes, there were several hundred arms pointing in wildly different directions.
22:18: Then he pulled out a compass and said, this is how we know which way is north.
22:25: You can't know from within yourself. And in that way, the
22:31: Bible answers the big questions to life. Now the Bible is our compass that points us in the direction that we need to go.
22:48: So we know that the Bible agrees with reality in the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the fossil record, history or archeology, the value of human life, the reason for pain, evil, and death, and there is design in all of life.
23:16: So the Bible supports this science, and we can get a reality check by looking in God's word for answers.
23:31: All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
23:47: So that goes for us. And then also we can, again, share that with others.
23:55: So section two, the world pulls us away from truth.
24:05: Generations have been deceived into believing that Genesis is inaccurate and that the account of creation is not true.
24:16: Evolution has been taught as fact, even though it's not.
24:21: Many believe that evolution is accurate without flaws, while believing that the
24:28: Bible is inaccurate, unscientific, and irrelevant in today's culture.
24:34: We know that's not true. So the lie of evolution has grown more and more over the years to where most people believe it just as fact.
24:53: And if you try to discuss that with them, they adamantly will say that it is fact.
25:01: But it's a lie. We know a lot. We know that the Bible disagrees with it.
25:09: So scientists aren't always correct. They make mistakes, and good scientists, too.
25:16: So this is not to say all scientists are bad, all secular scientists are bad, or anything like that, just that scientists make mistakes.
25:27: So this was an article, and it just talked about five greatest scientific blenders,
25:34: Darwin's notion of heredity, Kelvin's Earth Age estimate,
25:40: Pauling's triple helix, Hoyle's Big Bang, and Einstein's cosmological constant.
25:47: So, again, science is not always correct.
25:56: Scientists aren't always truthful. And we know that from the past, the dating methods that they've used, many secular scientists agree that evolution is not scientifically sound.
26:14: So there are secular scientists, some who believe in evolution, and others that feel that it is not scientifically sound.
26:24: And then there's the fragmentary evidence that's based on reconstructions of wishful thinking, hyperbole science fiction, without a demonstrative mechanism of mutational events.
26:38: So basically what that's saying is they will take a little bit of information here, a little bit of information here, and try to put it together in a way that makes it sound correct, or makes it sound right.
26:52: It's pretty much wishful thinking, because it doesn't mesh, it doesn't all connect together.
27:01: Some of those examples are like Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Ota Benga, Java Man, Neanderthal Man, Tongue Child, Ramipithecus, Arte, Australopithecines, and then there's
27:18: Lucy, the Australopithecus. Now, the man who discovered
27:26: Lucy, by his own account, on his expedition in 1973, wrote that when we arrived at Hadar with nine other
27:40: French and American scientists prepared for a two -month stay, by this time
27:46: I had left Chicago and taken a job teaching anthropology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
27:54: With these credentials, I had managed to get some funding for my first expedition as a co -leader, and then get this.
28:03: I mean, he really admits that, as he said, I knew, though, that I had to prove myself by finding some hominids or money would dry up.
28:15: So he kind of admits that he has to find something, or he wasn't going to get funding anymore.
28:22: So he definitely found something and put things together, though we had no confirmed dates yet from the rocks at Hadar by comparing.
28:35: So instead of doing scientific tests, he compared it with other mammal fossils, and especially pig teeth, with those that had been found at the
28:46: Alamo. Tommy Gray and I suspected that the knee joint could be between three and four million years old.
28:56: So basically, he said he suspected, he just basically guessed that that's how old the knee joint was without doing any kind of scientific test.
29:08: And this right here is a picture of the bones that were actually found.
29:15: So, and Lucy, in case you weren't familiar with this, Lucy was the one where they said that it was kind of the missing link where it was
29:25: Lucy was a female ape that actually stood up like a human instead of over like an ape.
29:36: But this was the bones that they came across, so there's really not even enough bones to prove that.
29:49: So scientific conclusions have changed over the centuries.
29:55: So sometimes scientists are being truthful and honest, and they still might get it right because they don't have all of the evidence.
30:06: As time goes by, more things are discovered. So again, conclusions have changed, but God's word never does.
30:17: Evolution requires the addition of new genetic information, but evolution does not provide this.
30:26: Even evolution by God's hand, which is theistic evolution, it's not biblical, and it's not true.
30:36: So a creationist timeline, as you're probably all familiar with, is about 6 ,000 years.
30:43: An evolutionist timeline is 20 billion years ago things were created, so there's a huge difference there.
30:53: And again, there isn't the evidence. Nobody was there at the time to say this is when it began.
31:02: Nobody saw it for millions of years ago, but we look at the evidence, and we have someone on the creation side who was there and who witnessed it and gave account to Moses to write in the
31:21: Bible. So the bottom line about evolution and theistic evolution is that it undermines the timeline order given to us in the
31:33: Bible. So there's a geological rock record that says a certain level was millions of years ago or billions of years ago, and that first it was taken from primordial soup and changed and evolved over time.
31:54: Well, the Bible says that God created the heavens and the earth and that he created it in the order of the six days that are in the
32:04: Bible. Well, those do not line up. Evolution's account of creation and God's account of creation contradict each other.
32:15: So we need to accept that the Bible for what it says, and otherwise we're compromising the
32:22: Bible to line up with what some scientists are saying. And many scientists don't believe in creation by God's account, by the biblical account.
32:38: So section three, we can be sure the creation account and God's word is true.
32:47: Scientifically, there is design in all aspects of life, beginning with the self.
32:53: Even Darwin himself said that if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, which is basically evolution, that he goes on to say that his theory would absolutely break down.
33:18: And he did state that he could not find a case, but since then we've learned a lot more about even the simple cell.
33:30: And we do find design in these things. The incredible human body, there's design in the heart that pumps over 100 ,000 times a day, red blood cells that transport oxygen to tissues, white blood cells that rush to identify enemy agents in the body and mark them for destruction, 6 ,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body, and also 60 trillion cells.
34:01: Each second, 10 million cells die and are replaced. Bones are stronger than concrete, and a nose that can recognize and remember 50 ,000 different scents.
34:15: And eyes and ears, which are more complex than any man -made machine.
34:22: Now, there's laminin. I don't know if you've ever heard about it, but if you get the chance, look it up, because it's a protein that looks like a cross.
34:32: Now, this doesn't necessarily prove that the Bible is true, but it's kind of cool, and it's really something worth looking at, because the
34:42: Bible is the ultimate authority. So this is just kind of showing you the amazing human body that God created and could not have evolved, and there's several reasons why, including the fact that parts of the body wouldn't exist for evolution purposes.
35:07: We can be confident that God's word is true. The Bible is the most textually supported piece of literature from ancient world.
35:17: This is because thousands of biblical manuscripts, the accuracy of transmitted text, and the earliness of manuscript dates.
35:29: So when you think about this, the earliness of manuscript dates. So the books that were written happened much sooner after the actual events, while people were still alive, rather than some of most historical books are written after people have died and aren't able to just relate and share their information.
35:57: So there's tons of information that supports the manuscripts. There's more copies of the
36:04: Bible than books on Caesar, Homer, Plato, and they're dated much closer to when the events actually occurred than any other books on Caesar or Aristotle or anything.
36:17: And this is just a sample of some papyrus from the
36:22: Bible. Now, the Bible has never contradicted science.
36:29: You may have heard that people say the Bible and science are incompatible.
36:36: And that's a false statement. Just it's period, it's false. There are real science that supports the truth of the
36:46: Bible. While the Bible isn't a literal science book, it has never been contradicted by scientific evidence.
36:54: In fact, many scientific things were reported in the Bible first and later discovered by scientists.
37:02: Some of these, and there are many, these are just a few that were written about before they were discovered by science.
37:11: And then after each item is the scripture that supports it.
37:17: So the earth is round and spherical. Now we've all heard about the flat earth and, you know, people saying,
37:26: Oh, Christians are dumb. They believe in the flat earth. Well, actually it wasn't
37:31: Christians who believed in that. They, the Christians were the ones that actually pointed to the
37:38: Bible in Isaiah, where it talks about the world being round or spherical.
37:46: Also the fact that the earth is suspended in space. There was mythology where they actually thought that the earth was being supported by a turtle.
38:01: And the fact that the stars are innumerable, there are mountains and canyons in the sea.
38:10: There are springs and fountains in the sea. These actually were discovered by a gentleman who's called the father of oceanography.
38:20: And he actually learned this by reading the
38:26: Bible. And then he went to discover it. So the hydrologic cycle also is a fact that was in the
38:36: Bible before it was discovered by science. The fact that all living things were made after their own kind.
38:45: And Moses recorded laws comparable to modern health and sanitation practice in most civilized countries today.
38:55: And one of those things is a concern in sanitation and about the hand washing.
39:02: And you may have heard that years ago that doctors would see patients after they had dealt with patients who had died or had infectious disease.
39:18: They would go from patient to patient and their patients were dying. Well, looking to the
39:25: Bible, they discovered that they should try washing their hands. And the death rate went down because of that.
39:33: Also, there's the fact of circumcision being done on the eighth day.
39:38: It has something to do with the amount of blood in the area on the eighth day is a lot less than on the other days.
39:50: There's also the human blood stream. And the Bible also talks about the first two laws of the thermodynamics.
39:59: So here's just a little picture. I'm not sure exactly what they pictured back then, but I thought it was cute of a turtle carrying the earth.
40:10: And then this is showing charting of currents in the ocean.
40:17: And that was done by Matthew Fontaine Morey, who again, like I said, was called the father of oceanography.
40:26: And it was the Bible that inspired him to even look and seek out answers.
40:34: We can know that creation is true because we have God's word as well as so much evidence that supports it.
40:43: Now, here's the top ten evidences of recent creation. And this was put out by Eric Hoven of Creation Today.
40:53: Number one, there's very little sediment on the seafloor. Number two, the bent rock layers.
41:01: Now, if you've ever gone places and in Tennessee, I'm surprised there's actually a lot more exposed rocks here.
41:11: And you can see how the layers of rocks have been curved. And we know how hard rock is, so how did that happen?
41:22: Okay, there's also soft tissue in fossils. If they were millions or billions of years old, it would not have survived.
41:32: There's a faint sun paradox, rapidly decaying magnetic fields, which again, in millions of years, it wouldn't even exist anymore.
41:47: As well as helium in radioactive rocks, that too would not be existent in old age earth.
41:58: Carbon -14 in fossils, coals and diamonds, the short -lived comets, very little salt in the sea, and the
42:08: DNA in quote -unquote ancient bacteria. Now, one book that I read, it was actually one of the classes that I took, is a great book to research and find a lot of the answers.
42:26: It's called Science in the Bible by Henry Morris, who was part of ICR. And it goes through a lot of detail of facts that are biblical.
42:40: It's great, I definitely recommend that book. So also, archaeology confirms the
42:47: Bible. Archaeological verifications include proof that there was a ruler named
42:55: Belshazzar, that the Hittites not only existed, but also had a vast empire.
43:03: King Sargon also ruled, and the matters that touched upon history in the
43:08: Book of Acts are demonstrably accurate. So far, the findings of archaeology have verified, and in no case disputed, historical points of the biblical record.
43:21: And that was by Josh McDowell. He's also a Christian apologist. He's got a lot of great books he's worth looking into.
43:31: In the years past, the Bible was actually used in archaeological dig sites, because of the accurate, detailed information about the areas that they were excavating.
43:44: Although some archaeologists once boasted that the Bible was full of errors, because no independent historic evidence had been found to confirm the
43:55: Bible's claims, but a slew of astounding discoveries has put damper on their boasting.
44:03: Archaeology provides us with fascinating and amazing affirmations of Scripture's accuracy and trustworthiness.
44:13: I know a recent one, I believe it was 1994,
44:20: I could be wrong with the date, that for years, they had said that the Bible was wrong, because there was no evidence of King David.
44:29: Well, around that time, there was some discovery that supported
44:35: King David, so once again, the Bible was accurate. There's also the accuracy of archaeology in the discovery of ancient
44:46: Jericho, and we all know the story in the Bible about Jericho and the walls falling down.
44:55: Then, there's the Dead Sea Scrolls. I'm just going to show a picture. I think it's amazing to be able to look at that.
45:04: The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the area around the Dead Sea, in some caves near Qumran, between 1949 and 1956.
45:17: The scrolls are a very important discovery, because they affirm the reliability of the
45:23: Old Testament. They show us that the Old Testament part of the
45:28: Bible is the same as it was written some 2 ,100 to 2 ,300 years ago.
45:35: What that's saying, basically, is that the discovery of these scrolls showed us that over time, instead of the
45:47: Bible's wording getting changed, it actually stayed the same, so it was reliable from the earliest findings of the
45:58: Bible to the latest findings of the Bible. It was written by Jewish scribes whose lives were committed to putting the exact words of God, and to preserve it for fellow and future observers of the faith.
46:15: They were real people in history. The scribes would painstakingly copy the original text, letter for letter.
46:27: They'd write a letter, they'd go back and check, and then go back and do a next letter, go back and check, and make sure they were doing the correct letter.
46:38: But even if a mistake was made, they would have to throw away their work and start over again.
46:48: There's also the finding of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I went to a conference about its
46:57: Genesis history, and one of the gentlemen that was working on this project was there, and he was sharing some of the findings.
47:10: So also, geology confirms the Bible. Most fossils that are found are sea creatures, and they are found up in the mountains.
47:24: So the majority, I think it's about 85 % of all fossils, are sea creatures.
47:31: Hmm, where would they find all those sea creatures up in the mountains?
47:37: Hmm. Well, I bet there was a flood that caused that. So there's also the abrupt appearance of animals and plants, mostly as they look today.
47:51: So instead of evolving or changing or millions, if you quote the evolutionists or old age theorists, that the plants that were from millions of years ago, you would think that they would change over time, but they suddenly show up in the fossil record, and they have not changed over time.
48:22: So there are no transitional fossils. There aren't, as evolution would allude to, that over time things were changed.
48:33: It does not show that in the geological record. Fossils do not demonstrate the progression from simple structure to complex organisms.
48:46: Then there's the story about Mount St. Helens. It's not just a story, it's actually fact.
48:53: And I'm sure many of you can remember when it actually happened. I believe it was 1983.
49:00: But that was a great thing that happened because scientists were able to do a lot of study after it happened.
49:11: And it actually came out revealing a lot of things that supported a young Earth.
49:18: Because canyons were made in a short amount of time.
49:24: Fossils were made in a short amount of time. And all of these support a young Earth instead of an old
49:33: Earth. And then, of course, we can know that the Bible is true because of the amount of prophecy in it.
49:42: And Lee Strobel, who wrote Case for Christ, said the odds alone that it would be impossible for anyone to fulfill the
49:50: Old Testament prophecies. Then there is a statistical analysis by a mathematician,
49:59: Peter Stoner, and said the chances of Christ fulfilling 48 prophecies is one chance in a trillion, trillion, trillion.
50:09: So each time you add a trillion, you're adding 12 zeros.
50:15: So think about all the zeros in that trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion. So anyways, it's pretty much impossible.
50:24: Yet, only Jesus throughout history has fulfilled them, except for the few that are still to be fulfilled.
50:33: And a pastor named Louis Lapid said, you know,
50:41: I go through the books that people write to tear down what we believe. That's not a fun thing to do.
50:48: But I spent the time to look at each objection individually and then to research the context and wording of the original language.
50:57: And he goes on to say every single time the prophecies have stood up and shown themselves to be true.
51:09: So why is creation and Genesis so important to us as Christians?
51:18: Well, there's the authority of the Scripture. If you don't believe that what the
51:27: Bible says is real, then you're not giving it the authority from God. So it's important that we believe it and we believe that it is true because it came from God.
51:43: And also the Bible says that death is a result of sin. Now were the fossils laid down over millions of years or were they laid down by a worldwide flood?
51:57: If millions of years, then there would have been millions of years of death and decay before sin.
52:06: And this would undermine the foundation for the gospel. So it is foundational.
52:12: It is that important that we understand and believe the creation account in Genesis.
52:24: Section four, this assurance brings hope and hope anchors our soul.
52:32: So in conclusion, when we look at the evidences that support the factual
52:40: Bible, we see that it was God who created all things.
52:46: When we know that God created everything, we know that the creator of man did not want us to perish in our sin.
52:56: For God so loved the world that he made a way for us through his son.
53:03: That is the ultimate hope of creation. That is the hope that you can share with others.
53:10: With all the darkness and ugliness in the world, we can be confident that we don't have to spend eternity in darkness.
53:19: Without a God who loves us because we know the creation account is true and that brings hope.
53:28: That is hope. So when I've spoken before,
53:34: I really like to encourage moms to do this, but this can be for anyone, for men or women.
53:41: That these things we need to do, we need to study the
53:47: Bible and continue in a growing relationship with God. We need to remember and know that science does confirm the
53:57: Bible and it does not contradict with the Bible. And one of the most important things
54:05: I think also is that we need to be the person that we want our kids to be. Or that we expect others to be.
54:14: If we want our kids or we want others to be faithful, then we need to be faithful.
54:20: If we want others to be kind and loving, we need to be kind and loving.
54:26: So it's just to set a good example. And especially as Christians, people have their eyes on us.
54:33: You never know who is watching us. I know years ago, we used to take a lot of the neighbor kids to church every
54:40: Sunday. And we had a neighbor across the street who was not very friendly and she was quite grouchy actually.
54:48: Used to yell at the kids a lot and stuff. But when she had a hard time, when she was going through something really tough, she came over to the house and said she wanted to talk to me because she saw us going to church every
55:04: Sunday. And I'm just grateful, I thank God that she felt comfortable in coming to talk to me and that God provided that opportunity.
55:18: So remember, you don't know who's watching you and you can be the best witness.
55:24: Especially for those who never step in church. So you need to teach your children or others that Jesus loves them and will guide them in life.
55:35: Again, that brings hope. People are so hopeless right now. They need to know that they are loved.
55:44: And of course, it's important to keep actively aware of what's going on in the world.
55:51: And right now, I mean, just even being aware of the socialism that is growing is important to be able to know it, to see that it's coming, and to be able to tell other people about it and why it's not good.
56:06: Because they're not teaching it in schools, the bad part of socialism.
56:12: So many of our young kids actually think that socialism is a good thing. And we know that nothing good has ever come from it.
56:20: It's humanistic. And, you know, people end up dying.
56:25: Millions of people end up dying because of that. So, again, just kind of don't stick your head in the sand.
56:33: Don't watch the news all the time either, but kind of know what's going on. And then, of course, keep an ongoing relationship and open discussions, whether it's with your kids, your spouse, your family, your friends.
56:49: It's good to just keep that relationship open so that when they have something go wrong in their life or something else, they know who to come to.
57:02: They feel comfortable talking to you. And then, you know, then they feel comfortable opening up about what they're thinking about.
57:11: Or maybe if they have questions, they'll feel comfortable coming to you for questions.
57:17: So I also like to encourage those that I share with that there are many, many books and websites and ministries that have information that is true, biblical, and scientific.
57:39: These are just a few. There's so many more. There's Answers in Genesis, Creation Today, Creation Training, Dave Reeves' Ministry, Institute for Creation Research, Creation Ministries International, Biblical Science Institute, Genesis Apologetics, and then there's the
57:58: Creation Museum in Santee. So I strongly encourage you to read your
58:04: Bible and do the research through some of these ministries or through their books and products that they provide.
58:14: So if you have any questions, please feel free to ask and be more than welcome to hear it.
58:26: If you all want to take off your mute or put on your camera and talk to Debbie, if you have any questions for her or want to thank her or wonder why she's moving back to California.