We know what a day is!

One tactic employed by old earth compromisers who try to reconcile their bankrupt theories with the clear words of Scripture is to haggle over the meaning of the word, “day.”  It’s weird, too, because the meaning of that simple word is not debated anywhere it appears in Scripture except for Genesis 1.  When Joshua marched around Jericho for 7 days, how long did he march around Jericho?  When Jonah was in the belly of the whale for 3 days, how long was he in the belly of the whale?  These sound like trick questions because the answers seem so obvious.  Yet when you ask a theistic evolutionist or old earth creationist how long it took God to create the heavens and the earth, suddenly they don’t know what a day is.  Excuse me while I roll my eyes.

Now, I’m the first to admit that words can have a range of meanings.  Even the word “day” can have multiple meanings.  If I were to say, “I have trouble seeing at night so I only drive during the day,” would you know what I mean?  Of course you would.

What if I were to say something like, “Back in my day, kids walked to school”?  Yes, I don’t think you’d have any trouble understanding that either.

If someone said I might win a Nobel Prize for my blog, I would probably answer, “That’ll be the day.”  In this case, “day” means a time that’s never going to happen - yet even then, no one struggles to understand the word.  

When God commanded His people to work six days and rest on the seventh (Exodus 20:11), do you think any of them stopped to ask, “I wonder what God means by six days?”  Hardly!  It seems like the word is easily understood everywhere it is used - in or out of the Bible - except in Genesis 1.  How strange!

So if the word “day” can mean so many different things, how can we know what it means in Genesis 1?  If only there were a definition given in the text //RKBentley stares off in the distance in deep thought//.  Oh wait - there is!!  

Genesis 1:1-5, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Oh, I see it now.  When God made the world, it was dark.  Then He made the light.  He called the light day, and the dark and light periods together (evening and morning) were also a day.  Duh!

“Day” can mean many things, but it can also mean a single rotation of the earth - the day/light cycle - of about 24 hours.  In fact, it usually means a 24-hour period.  So when the Bible provides a definition right in the text, why do people grope around for some other meaning?  

A while back, I wrote a series (here) rebutting a video by Inspiring Philosophy who claimed 10 scriptural problems with young earth creationism.  In the introduction to the video, the narrator said the following:

If you haven't heard, there are millions of people today who believe the earth is only about 6,000 years old and, about 4,000 years ago, there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all life on land except for a few people and two of every animal that survived in an ark. The basis of this theory comes from many who say that we ought to take a literal or a plain reading of the Bible, the Holy Book of Christianity.

The rational behind this young earth view, is that they are just taking the plain reading of the text and that Christians, who believe the earth is old, have to misconstrue or reinterpret passages to make the Bible fit with an ancient earth and the theory of evolution. 

Um… yes.  In order to make the Bible fit with an old earth and the theory of evolution, evolutionists have to make the clear words of the Bible mean something other than what the words ordinarily mean.  That’s exactly what Inspiring Philosophy does.  It’s what every evolutionist who claims to believe the Bible does.  The word day, to them, can’t mean “evening and morning” so they muddy the waters with a bunch of gobbledygook about how day could mean a bunch of other things too.  Meanwhile, they ignore the most ordinary meaning.

2 Peter 1:20 says, “no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”  Yet in the case of Genesis 1, the word day means an undefined period of time that includes millions or even billions of years.  Exactly how does that fit the definition of “evening and morning” given in the text?  It’s the epitome of a private interpretation.  I can only think of 2 reasons they do this: they either are intentionally twisting the meaning of the word day in order to make the Bible fit their godless theory (which they deny) or they can't read.  

I think we all know which it is.

What can Monty Python teach us about the Bible?

Maybe I’m showing my age but I think Monty Python is one of the funniest comedy groups ever.  If you can look past their bad language, innuendo, and irreverent humor, their comedic genius sets them apart from most comedians.  Their gags are sort of off-the-wall but it’s not slap stick.  It’s certainly not low brow.  Some of their scenes are high IQ and work on many levels to poke fun at social norms.

Arguably, their 2 best movies are Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Both have an overtly religious (albeit irreverent) theme with lots of political humor thrown in for good measure.  In The Holy Grail, the guard scene is one of my favorites.  It’s only a couple of minutes long but take a moment to watch it.  I promise you’ll be amused.

Isn’t that hilarious?  Anyway, I’m going somewhere with this.  You noticed that I asked in the title of this post if there was something we could learn about the Bible from Monty Python?  Normally, I wouldn’t recommend getting theological pointers from comedians but, in this case, we can use it as a sort of “what not to do” when reading the Bible.

Do these guards remind you of anyone?  Think hard.  Don’t feel bad if you can’t think of anyone because I didn’t notice it for a long time.  Eventually, though, it sort of clicked.  These guards remind me of Christians who claim to believe the Bible but still believe in evolution!

Let me explain.  The guards in this skit were given very clear instructions: stay here and make sure the prince doesn’t leave the room.  Yet as simple as that sounds, the guards just didn’t seem to get it.  The king kept repeating the commands very slowly and even asked them to repeat them back to him - correcting them every time they strayed from the directive.  And just when he thought they understood everything, the guards started to follow the king out of the room proving they didn’t understand anything at all!  //RKBentley chuckles//

Genesis is a very straightforward and plainly written account of the creation. Even a simpleton could read it and plainly see that it says God created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. The creation event was a week long. It wasn't millions or billions of years. It wasn't a long progression of creation events over countless generations. There isn't a catastrophe and reconstruction wedged in between verses one and two. It's a simple account of a miraculous event. It's hard to misunderstand.

Yet despite the fact that it is so clearly written, there are millions of people out there that don't seem to be able to understand the clear meaning of the words. “How long is a day?,” I've heard them ask. Next they will say, “The Bible only tells us that God did it and science tells us how.” Excuse me? Are they reading the same text as me? The Bible says that God spoke and it happened. He created light on the first day, the sky on the second day, the dry land on the third day, etc. Each day is punctuated with the phrase “evening and morning” and marked with an ordinal number (“first day”, “second day”, etc). Could it really be more clear?

2 Peter 1:20 says, Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.  In other words, the Bible generally means what it says and there’s no need to look for some hidden meaning or tortured interpretation.  To say that “six days” could somehow mean “billions of years” is the epitome of a private interpretation!

If you believe that the Genesis account of creation really means God created via something like evolution, then let me ask you a question: if God had meant to write that He created everything in six days, how might He have said it any more plainly? Why is it that the word “day” is easily understood the other few hundred times it is used but suddenly is “vague” when we read it in Genesis? Why should we even look for a different meaning other than the plain one? To me, people who read the Bible and then claim Genesis means something other than what it clearly means sound about as silly as the guards in the video.

The sad part is that the guards in the movie are trying to be funny.

Numbers 31: But all the women children keep alive for yourselves

Critics of the Bible sometimes try to attack the Bible by claiming it condones things that are morally objectionable.  I’ve always thought it was a strange tactic because atheism lacks the foundation to make any moral claim at all.  To say something is wrong means it ought not to be that way.  Christians believe God created the universe the way it ought to be and any time we disobey God’s will, it’s wrong.  However, without any god, who is to say how things ought to be?  Certainly, the universe doesn’t care what happens.  Apart from any transcendent Law Giver, the atheist can only say what he thinks people ought to do.  Without God, what is right or wrong changes on the subjective whim of opinion.  For an atheist to claim anything is wrong makes about as much sense as me saying people who like orange Starbursts are evil!  After all, my opinion would be just as valid as anyone else’s.

Alex O’Connor (also known as the Cosmic Skeptic) is one such atheist who claims the Bible condones things that are objectively wrong.  In a debate he had with Christian biologist, Jonathan McLatchie, (found on YouTube here) O’Connor made the following argument:

What about Numbers 31?...  I’ll just quote it.  Moses instructs the following to… they’re attacking the Midianites - essentially committing a genocide against the Medianites - and Moses instructs his combatants.  “Now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” [Numbers 31:17-18 NIV]. Now, I’m not entirely sure what a bunch of aggressive males would want with a bunch of virgin girls.  I’ll leave that up to the imagination of the audience.  But to me this seems not just slavery in terms of, like, a voluntary service contract.  This seems like a grotesque form of sexual slavery being advocated here.  Even in the course of war, I don’t think that’s acceptable.

McLatchie struggled to try to answer and after some hemming and hawing, finally admitted, “I confess I do struggle with this text so I don’t… uh… I don’t know the answer to that question.”  

I’m sure it’s sometimes difficult, in the pressure of a debate and being faced with a question you’d never really considered, to articulate a response.  I don’t fault McLatchie for not being able to answer.  However, the Bible says we should always be ready to give an answer (1 Peter 3:15); that’s not just answers to the easy questions but to the difficult ones as well.  So, with the benefit of having time to think, time to review the passages, and time to write and edit a response, I’m going to attempt to answer O’Connor here.  

I admit that, according to modern societal norms, events like the ones described in Numbers are very foreign to our Western ideals.  I don’t want to pretend I understand completely what was in the minds of the people who lived during those times.  I can say that God is good, He is just, and He is perfect in every way.  He has given us the Bible for our benefit so I can only trust that a correct understanding of the passages can be found within the pages of Scripture itself.  That is what I’m going to try to do here.  I pray that God will guide my thoughts.  Amen.

First we need to consider the history of Israel’s interactions with the Midianites.  In Numbers 25, we see that, when the fledgling nation of Israel was dwelling in the land of Shittim, the people of Israel were being seduced by the women of Moab.  They were sacrificing to other gods, eating the meat offered to these false gods, and bowing down to their idols.  The Lord became angry with the children of Israel and sent a plague among the people.  

Moses commanded the judges to kill all of the Israelites who worshipped Baalpeor.  The people began to repent and verse 6 describes how people were weeping before the door of the Tabernacle.  But even in their repentance, one of the children of Israel unashamedly brought a Midianite woman, the daughter of a Midian chief, past the front of the Temple in the view of Moses and all the people.  At that point, Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the priest, followed the man and woman to his tent where he ran them both through with a spear.  Because of Phinehas’ actions, God’s wrath was turned away from the people and He relented from the plague He had sent on them.

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  I’ve written about this before (here).  All have sinned and so all die (Romans 5:12).  Some die old and some die young.  Some die violently and some die peacefully.  God alone is the Author of life and it is His right to decide when we must die.  Because of their idolatry, 24,000 Israelites had died from the plague.  But God’s wrath was not against Israel alone.  He also would judge the nation of Midia:

Numbers 25:16-18, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Vex the Midianites, and smite them: For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor's sake.

Having now read the back story, let us look to Numbers 31 and the verses in question.  After the battle, when Midia had been defeated, the Jewish army returned with their spoils of war - including the women and children that had been captured.  Moses was angry and went out to confront the captains of the host:

Numbers 31:15-18, And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

So we can see that God’s judgment on Midia wasn’t arbitrary.  The Midianites received the just recompense for their role in leading the people of Israel away from God into the worship of idols.  The men and boys who warred against Israel were killed.  The women who seduced the men of Israel were killed.  However, the young women - those who had not been with any man - were spared!  It was an act of mercy God had shown to the innocent girls who had not participated in the wicked acts of the older women.

O’Connor’s implication that God was allowing these young women to be kept as some type of “səx sl@ves” is unfounded.  I’ve talked before (here) about the use of the term “slavery” in the Bible and how being a slave in those times was essentially a type of job in most instances.  When the Bible talks about “slaves,” it is primarily talking about 2 groups of people: prisoners of war and the chronically poor. It is the first group that we are discussing here.  

War was a grim reality at the time of the Old Testament and conquered kingdoms meant defeated populations that needed to be dealt with. If you defeat an enemy, you can't simply pack up and go home or else you'll be fighting the same enemy again sometime later. Therefore, the Law gave instructions in dealing with enemy prisoners.  These were allowances God made for a fallen world and did not necessarily represent God’s perfect will - similar to how Jesus described the Laws surrounding divorce in Matthew 19:8.

Slavery in the Bible is nothing like the slavery we think of in the Antebellum South.  In the Bible, God commanded His people to treat their slaves/servants fairly and justly.  No where in the Bible are female servants allowed to be “səx sl@ves.”  Exodus 7 talks about how women maidservants must be treated as a wife if married to the master or treated like a daughter if married to the master’s son.

In spite of O’Connor’s innuendo, the young Midianite girls were not going to be abused.  They were going to be taken care of, treated fairly, and would probably go on to live productive lives.  I suspect that many of them would even come to love the Jewish families they served, to marry Jewish men, to learn about the God of Abraham, and to become believers themselves. What O'Connor attempts to portray as "unacceptable" and immoral, is actually a picture of God's wrath, judgment, and mercy.

The Bible is true because it says it’s true!! Right?

A poster in an atheist, Fakebook group recently made the following statement:

Ever heard this? “The Bible is true because it’s the Word of God… and we know it’s the Word of God because the Bible says so.”

That’s Circular Reasoning — a logical loop that never leaves the starting point.

Example:

> “All Scripture is God-breathed…” (2 Timothy 3:16)

This verse is often used to “prove” the Bible’s divine origin… by quoting the Bible itself. It’s like a used car salesman saying, “Trust me, this car is perfect — just look, it’s written right here on the bumper sticker.”

Real evidence doesn’t need to refer back to itself to be convincing — it can be tested, examined, and confirmed from outside sources. If your proof is just “because I said so,” it’s not proof — it’s just repetition.

In other words, this atheist is trying to say, “Christians claim the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true!”  This is a criticism I’ve seen leveled toward Christians many times.  It’s more of a straw man than a legit criticism, though, because I don’t know any Christian who really says this.  The reality is the exact opposite.  The Bible says it’s true because it IS true!

Let me explain; my name is Bentley.  Really.  That’s my name.  If someone asked me my name, I wouldn’t say my name isn’t Bentley.  I wouldn’t say my name is John Smith.  I wouldn’t say Bentley could be my name.  I would say my name is Bentley!  I’m affirming something that is true.  If I’m being honest, and Bentley is really my name, then you would expect me to confirm that it is.  In that same way, the Bible confirms itself to be true because it is true.  Get it?

Now, if I tried to claim the Bible was true but the Bible itself said that truth cannot be known, then we would have a problem.  If truth cannot be known then anything the Bible says can be suspect.  How would I even know if the statement, “truth cannot be known,” is a true statement?  The existence of absolute truth seems to be an ontological necessity.  To even say, “Nothing can be known absolutely,” is itself an absolute statement.  To claim that truth is relative or that it’s subjective or that truth cannot be known are all self-defeating statements. Here's some irony for you: All arguments against absolute truth only serve to make obvious the reality of absolute truth!

The Bible is true and it confirms itself to be true.  It’s not circular reasoning.  I’m not claiming the Bible is true because it says it’s true.  No one is claiming that.  I’ve tried explaining this to atheists before but they can’t put aside their own, flawed, talking points long enough to understand it.  Please, let’s put that straw man to bed and get on to the real question: How do we know the Bible is true?  If anyone sincerely seeks to know what is true, that is the question he needs to be asking. 

Answering the question, How do we know the Bible is true, is far more challenging than picking apart the straw man argument built by atheists.  I could talk about the number of extant manuscripts and the science of textual criticism; I could talk about the historical certainty of Jesus, His miracles, and His resurrection; I could talk about all the archeological finds that confirm events discussed in the Bible; I could talk about the superior wisdom of the Bible in describing the human experience; or I could talk about my life experience in seeing of the moral correctness taught in the Bible.  All of these things might seem persuasive but we need to be careful about how we conclude the Bible is true.  After all, is the Bible true because some other thing says it’s true?  If that were the case, we may be putting the authority of the other things above the authority of the Bible! The skeptic above revealed that he believed the ultimate authority resides in these other things when he said, "Real evidence doesn’t need to refer back to itself to be convincing — it can be tested, examined, and confirmed from outside sources. "

If the Bible is true, then it is true regardless of anyone else’s opinion.  How can I say, I’ve studied the Bible and found that it's true?  Who am I to give my opinion on the revelation of the Omniscient One?  Let me be clear: I am not the judge of the Bible - the Bible is the judge of me.  I will not say the Bible is true because I judge it to be true!  I am not that proud!

So how do I answer the question?  I’ve struggled to come up with a good illustration so let me tell you how I see it.  This might seem a little far fetched but hear me out.  Don’t laugh until I'm finished.

Does anyone remember the scene from The Karate Kid where Miyagi agrees to teach Daniel karate?  You can watch the scene on YouTube (here) but I’ve transcribed the relevant part:

Miyagi: “First make sacred pact.  I promise teach karate - that my part.  You promise learn.  I say, you do.  No questions.  That your part. Deal?”

Daniel: “Deal.”

As Daniel holds his hand out to shake on the agreement, Miyagi puts a sponge in his hand and tells him to wash and wax the cars.  When Daniel starts to protest, Miyagi cuts him off and reminds him of the agreement.  If Miyagi says it, then Daniel should do it without question. 

If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve missed a treasure that helped shape the teen experience in the 80s.  That's too bad. Anyway, there was a reason Miyagi had him wax the cars (“Wax on.  Wax off.”).  And it wasn’t just waxing the cars, it was also sanding the floor, painting the fence, and painting the house.  It wasn’t until after Daniel had done all these things that Miyagi’s karate training became apparent.  

But let's back up a little, why did Daniel agree to enter into this “sacred pact” with Miyagi.  Daniel had moved to a new city where he was being bullied by a group of teens from Cobra Kai, the local karate school.  Miyagi was the maintenance man from Daniel’s apartment complex.  One night, as the rowdy teens were violently beating Daniel, Miyagi rescued him and defeated the entire gang single-handedly.  It was after this, that Miyagi agreed to teach Daniel karate and made the sacred pact.  Daniel agreed to do whatever Miyagi said - not because he was the greater authority than Miyagi but because he realized Miyagi was a greater authority than him!

So, now, let’s land this plane.  I don’t know more than the Bible.  Rather, God has given me the ability to reason (Isaiah 1:18) and I have come to realize that the Bible has more wisdom than I have.  It is this realization that has led me to lay down my own authority and submit to the authority of the Scripture.  I didn’t judge the Bible as true by my own arrogance, haughtiness, or pride.  Instead, I yield myself to its commands out of obedience, humility, and meekness.

Consider these words of Jesus:

John 14:21, He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

So you see, when we trust Jesus, He makes Himself known to us.  Jesus said, “why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).  When I asked Jesus to be my Savior, I also made Him my Lord.  I don’t always understand His commands.  I don’t always know His plan.  I certainly don’t always obey Him like I should.  Yet the more I try to be obedient, the more I come to see the truth of His promises.  That is how I know the Bible is true.

Once we yield ourselves to God’s word, then the truth of them becomes more obvious.  Just as I was saying above, the truth affirms the truth.  Of course textual criticism affirms the integrity of the Bible, of course archaeology reveals the veracity of the Bible, and of course everything the Bible proscribes is morally correct.  The Bible is true and every light by which we might examine it will show that it is true.

Have scientists figured out the origin of life?

I just read on yahoo!news, Scientists Say They May Have Just Figured Out the Origin of Life.  Here’s a quote from the story:

How did the building blocks of life come together to spawn the first organisms? It's one of the most longstanding questions in biology — and scientists just got a major clue.

A couple of things jumped out at me as I read the article.  First, why do we have this continuous flip flop over the question of abiogenesis?  I mean, is it part of the theory or not?  One self described “theistic evolutionist,” Tyler Franke, has this to say about abiogenesis:

[You don't understand evolution if] you think it has anything to do with the origin of life, let alone the origins of the universe.... This is like the king of all straw men, and it’s extremely common. It involves something like the thoroughly debunked theory of spontaneous generation (the idea that life can come from non-life under normal circumstances) being used as evidence against the theory of evolution. Hear me on this, guys: Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life.

Creationists usually always hear a response similar to Franke’s whenever the subject of the origin of life is raised.  I’ve written about this before (here).  The reason they want to divorce the origin of life from the rest of their theory is because they have no plausible explanation about how life began.  They want to posit a theory that all life has descended from a common ancestor, but when asked the reasonable question, “where did this first ancestor come from?,” they suddenly want to change the subject.  Their objection is nothing more than a red herring - a distraction from the embarrassing fact that they don't have an answer.

But in the yahoo!news article, we see the truth.  Evolutionists are keenly interested in knowing how life began.  They just admitted, “It's one of the most longstanding questions in biology.”  Why else are they continuing to do research into this area?  Why else would they still include the failed Miller-Urey experiment in biology text books after 75 years?  Creationists have known all along this is an important question so evolutionists need to stop with the dodges and denials.

Which brings me to my next point: If evolutionists want to hide from this subject and only ponder it secretly, amongst themselves, then why do they publish headlines like this one?  The answer is simple: when they think they’ve made a break-through on the subject, they trumpet it in hopes of squelching the criticism.  They’re hoping they will finally have an answer they can give to the Christians who keep pestering them about it.

But have scientists really made a break-though this time?  The short answer is no.  The headline, as usual, overstates the claim.  Remember, the headline says scientists, “may have just figured out the origin of life.” When you read the article, though, that’s not what’s happened at all.  Using quotes from the article, what was discovered is that, using “very simple chemistry… that could have occurred on early earth,” amino acids can link together.  “The results… show how RNA might have first come to control protein synthesis.” 

Notice the words I’ve made bold.  This so-called probiotic soup “could” have existed.  Amino acids linking randomly “might” have led to the first proteins.  It doesn’t sound to me like they’ve figured out anything for sure.

Online sites, magazines, and newspapers are trying to earn clicks.  They use hype to draw views so they can sell ads.  They’re just trying to put a little sizzle on the steak as the saying goes.  But what is happening is they’re reporting fake news.  I’m fairly confident that most of the eager readers of the sensational headlines, never went on to read and “peer-reviewed” scientific papers about what was actually found.

I’ve written before about how pop-science articles work (here).   It seems like nearly every day, there’s another sensational headline written about some major discovery that “proves” something about evolution.  Fans of the theory hoot and holler and thump their chests, doubling down on their complaints that creationists are just science deniers who don’t even understand evolution.  It’s been my experience, though, that most of these headlines age like milk.  I’m pretty sure that, in about 5 years, no one will remember this article and the scientific community will have moved on to making some other guesses about how life began.  There have been many of these pop-science stories written  just like this one - all of them being  just as sensational but also just as forgettable.

In this case, the authors of this article seem to already be hedging their bets.  Near the end of the story you can read this:

The catch is that as far as we can tell, the pantetheine crucial to making this all happen wouldn't have been found in high enough concentrations in the Earth's primordial oceans, where many scientists believe life may have originated….  Nick Lane, an origin of life chemist at UCL who wasn't involved in the study, further cautioned to Science that the amino acid chains being produced are random and chaotic, unlike the orderly arrangements produced by ribosomes.  

So the very article that suggests scientists may have figured out the origin of life, cautions readers that what was found probably couldn’t lead to life!  Why then are we even talking about it?  Well, like I’ve said, evolutionists are desperate to answer the question they claim isn’t even part of their theory.  This find is just another piece of information they can hang their hopes on until something more plausible comes along.  I love the closing line of the article:

But give these chemicals billions of years to bounce around, and anything can happen.

Ah, yes, it’s the “billions of years” solution.  Time is the hero of the evolutionary fairy tale.  It doesn’t matter that what we can observe happening right now doesn’t amount to anything - just give it “billions of years” and the frog becomes a prince!