The Passion Week: Thursday

This Easter season, I’ve made a series of posts addressing skeptics’ criticism surrounding the Resurrection.  As we close in on Easter, I want to do a day-by-day detail discussing the events happening during the Passion Week. 

Please keep checking back!

Thursday

Mark 14:12-15 tells us that this day began with the disciples asking Jesus where they would eat the Passover.  He told them to look for a sign which ultimately led them to a room already prepared.  This has come to be known as the Last Supper.

There is some debate as to which meal this actually was.  Some speculate that this was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which marked the official beginning of the Passover.  Others believe that this was the Passover Seder.  Any discussion of which meal it was will have to be the subject of a future post.  Regardless, this would be the last meal Jesus would share with His disciples.  As such, Jesus has a very poignant evening with them - one where He shares some of His most direct teachings.

Many notable things were said and done during the Last Supper and much could be written about any of them: the washing of the disciples’ feet, the announcement that one of them would betray Him, and the prophecy of Peter’s denial.  By far, though, the most important thing that happened was the New Covenant.

Matthew 26:26-28, And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

When Adam sinned in the Garden, he and Eve saw they were naked and became ashamed.  They tried to cover their shame with an apron, sewn together from fig leaves (Genesis 3:6-7).  Verse 21 says God made coats of skins to cover their nakedness which ushered in an era of sacrifices where the shedding of blood was made for a covering of sin (Hebrews 9:22).

When God made His covenant with Abraham, it was sealed with the sign of the circumcision (Genesis 17:10-11).  This covenant, made in blood, was a picture of the blood sacrifices that began in the Garden and continued until Jesus.  These were only temporary, though.  They were a typology of The Sacrifice that was to come - the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

The old covenant was not abolished; rather, it was fulfilled in the Person of Jesus Christ.  The shedding of His blood ended the need for any more sacrifices.  The veil was torn.  The Temple would be destroyed.  The penalty for sin is now satisfied by the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.  We no longer identify with the old covenant: the sign of the circumcision and the continued shedding of blood.  We now publicly profess our faith through baptism, a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.  Amen!!

The Scriptures tell us that, after the meal, they sang a hymn and traveled to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus earnestly prayed while His disciples slept.  As the pressing weight of His impending suffering bore down on Him, He nevertheless prayed that His Father’s will would be done.  Even as He prayed, the Temple guards were marching to arrest him, being led by one of the 12, Judas.  That night, He was arrested and taken away to be tried.  His hour had come.  

God commanded killing?

I came across a thread in an Atheists debate Christians group on FakeBook that was getting a lot of comments.  The opening post included a thumbnail (which I’ve included here) that began, “The Bible commands us to: Kill witches, kill adulterers, kill blasphemers,...” followed by about a dozen other alleged commands, and concludes with “Kill anyone who kills anyone.”  The seeming point of the thread was to make the Bible look like a “bad” book and…  well, I’m not sure what else.  Actually, I’ve never really understood this kind of argument.  Is the Atheist trying to say that there is no God because He’s mean?  That sounds non sequitur to me.  

I’ve written before about how unbelievers reject God because they have a wrong idea about who He is.  They create this false idea in their heads about how God should act if He were real and, since God doesn’t act that way, He must not be real.  But they’re not rejecting the true God; they’re rejecting a straw god of their own making.  I get the impression that’s what’s going on here.  The atheist who posted this is trying to suggest that the Bible isn’t true (or God isn’t real) because a “true” Bible wouldn’t have passages about killing witches!  

If we look carefully at the list, we see that some of the criticisms are misrepresentations of what the Bible is saying.  Nowhere does the Bible say, “Kill non-Hebrews,” for example.  Deuteronomy 20 is actually talking about specific peoples occupying the land God has promised to the fledgling nation of Israel.  The same list also cites Deuteronomy 20 as saying to “Kill all males after winning battles.” In other words, they are taking 2 passages describing one particular event, and claiming the Bible commands these to be universal rules.  Also, the list has “Kill gays” and “Kill men who have sex with other men” and even cites the same passage for both (Leviticus 20:13).  These are exactly the same things so why are they on the list twice?  It looks like items are being reworded, reinterpreted, and rewritten simply to bulk up the list.  It’s like highschool kids who fill up their research papers with nonsense sentences simply to reach the required word count.  In this case, the author of the list is padding the list simply to make the Bible sound worse than it actually is. 

It’s hard to take arguments like this seriously because atheists lack credibility.  They have a worldview that is built upon billions of years of death and struggle.  “Survival of the fittest” is the unofficial motto of evolution and killing off the “undesirables” in a tribe or village isn’t really any different than predators picking off the weakest members of their prey.  If the universe were all there is, the universe doesn’t care what happens.  It’s only because there is a Christian worldview,  one that values human lives above animals because we are made in God’s image, that criticisms like this have any weight at all.  In other words, it’s only because the Bible is true that these claims seem horrific!  Ironic, huh?

But what about these claims?  Do they contradict the idea of a loving God?  Do we hide from them and hope no one finds out about them?  Do we say, “that's the Old Testament so it’s not true anymore?”  No, no, and no.  What we should do is seek to understand God better and stand boldly on His word.  The answers to these criticisms are right there in the Scriptures and it is our job as Christians to be ready to respond when unbelievers speak them.  In this post, I hope to point to a few passages that might shed light on this subject.

1 John 4:8 tells us that God is love.  Some people seize upon this verse and others to try to portray Him as some namby-pamby kind of god.  They try to make God seem like a hippy whose only response to sin is pacifism.  If an earthly judge freed murderers because he “loved” them, we’d be outraged.  He would be an unjust judge.  If that’s what unbelievers think about God, then it’s no wonder they reject Him!  

The Bible also tells us about God’s wrath.  Romans 2:5-6 warns us, “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; Who will render to every man according to his deeds:”  How frightening is the thought of standing before an angry God, knowing I am guilty of my sins!

You see, God is not only love, He is also just.  He is also patient and long-suffering.  He is merciful and good.  He is perfect in all of His ways.  The creatures around the Throne don’t sing, “Love, love, love.”  They don’t sing, “Wrath, wrath, wrath.”  They sing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8).

Let’s get to the real meat of the issue: The penalty for witchcraft is still death.  The penalty for adultery is still death.  The penalty for blasphemy is still death.  The penalty for lying or stealing or looking at porn or cheating on your taxes is death. Need I remind you that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)?  It is the only penalty for sin and it has been that way for the entire history of man. But here’s the good news: “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  In this single verse, we see the love of God, the wrath of God, and the mercy of God.  Praise Him!!

Now, I know what the skeptics are saying: what about the list?  What about killing false prophets?  To that I would ask, where are all the true prophets?  Where is Moses and Daniel and Jeremiah?  In case you haven’t noticed, they’re dead too.  Romans 5:12 says, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:”  So, yeah, the Israelite armies killed all the Amorites and Hittites but all the Jewish soldiers are dead now too.  All the prophets are dead.  Samson and all the other Judges are dead.  David and Solomon and all the other kings of Israel are dead.  

Do you see where I’m going with this?  Hebrews 9:27 tells us that it is appointed unto men to die and afterward is the judgment. God is the author of life so it is His right to decide when we die.  Some people die very old and some die very young.  Some die peacefully and some die violently.  When and how they die might vary but just as all have sinned, so all die.  The mortality rate among humans is 100%. When you think about it, it's sort of silly to say that there's anyone who doesn't deserve to die. If everyone dies, then how can we say that a rebellious son or an adulterer isn't worthy of death?

No sin is “trivial.” The list might dismiss blasphemy, sexual immorality, and rebellion as harmless but any transgression of the law earns God's judgment and the wages of our sin is death. Nobody is stoned anymore but we all have the same destiny - a grave. We all also have the same opportunity - salvation through His Son. When we stand before God in judgment (and we all will), I'm going to receive mercy because I have believed in His Son. Others are welcome to tell God He's being unfair.

God created all animals to eat plants… and it was so!

 Genesis 1:29-30, And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.

Creationists are sometimes chided for believing that all animals were created to be herbivorous.  The usual criticism is that the fangs and claws of predatory animals that exist today were obviously designed to kill and eat the flesh of other animals.  Furthermore, due to the design of their digestive systems, most predatory animals couldn’t even survive on a vegetarian diet.  In summary, the sharp teeth of the T-rex weren’t designed to eat coconuts!

The assumption that sharp teeth = predator is overly simplistic.  Evolutionists seem to have a superficial grasp of advantage or adaptation - that is, they look at the survival benefit of a particular trait, then claim that trait evolved in order to convey that benefit!  For example, some might say male birds evolved bright feathers to attract a mate or male lions evolved large manes to protect their head and neck when fighting for dominance.  It’s about as scientific as saying Michael Jordan grew tall in order to play basketball.

Another misunderstanding held by many is the belief that the highly adapted creatures we observe today aren’t substantially different from their ancestors.  Critics have asked, for example, how did freshwater fish species survive the Flood when all the fresh and salt waters were mixed together?  The flawed assumption behind this criticism is that the modern species of fish have exactly the same range of tolerances to salt and temperatures as their ancestors had in Noah’s day.

I believe the creationists’ understanding of Scripture better explains what we observe in the world today.  God originally created plants and animals “after their kind” (Genesis 1:11, et al).  Every modern species we observe today belongs to one of these originally created kinds but modern animals are the products of centuries of changing environments and adaptation.  Today, the species that exists may not look like any of their created ancestors.

I sometimes use bears as an example of kinds and species.  Both creationists and evolutionists agree that all modern species of bears are descended from a common ancestor.  Creationists might call this the “bear-kind” (ursa).  What did the original bear look like?  If we could see this creature now, I think we could probably identify it as some kind of bear but did it look like a panda?  A grizzly?  A polar bear?  It would have shared characteristics with each of these species but I suspect it wouldn’t have looked exactly like any of them.  

God created a bear-kind with the genetic potential for diversity.   As bears spread out around the world after the Flood, natural selection began its work.  Traits well suited to one environment allowed members with that trait to survive while members without that trait died.  Eventually, all the cubs born in that environment possessed only the most beneficial and the population became a new species.  In Asia, some bears became pandas; near the North Pole, some bears became polar bears.

Here’s a question, though: what did the ancestral bear eat?  Pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo while polar bears primarily eat seals.  Both species have sharp teeth and claws.  Both have descended from the same common ancestor.  So, clearly, the ancestral bear did not have the same dietary restrictions as either of these descendants.  Likewise, sharp teeth on a dino or fossilized dung containing bits of bone may be evidence that a critter ate meat, but it’s not proof that it always ate meat or that God always intended for it to eat meat!

I’m not surprised that unbelievers believe in a theory that is so muddled and unconvincing.  What surprises me more, though, is that people who claim to be Christians also believe the same things.  Theistic evolutionists often apply the label of “myth,” “allegory,” or “parable” to the creation account.  They do this to try to make Scripture compatible with the corrupt theory of evolution.  But when we read Genesis 1:29-30, where God clearly tells the man that plants would be food to him and every animal, what do they do with the phrase, “and it was so”?

When God created the animals, He commanded that plants were to be their food.  The Bible clearly says, “and it was so.”  In other words, God said it and it happened!  All animals ate plants - even the ancestral bears, cats, wolves, and other predators.  I believe this comports with other passages that say death follows sin and was not what God intended.

Some people may ask why I would make a big deal about this point?  I believe that evolution is a religion of death.  The very idea of the “survival of the fittest” requires that the unfit don’t survive.  It is the struggle to live that supposedly drives evolution.  The death of one species, gives rise to a new species.  It’s the circle of life.  Evolution almost makes death seem noble which makes evolution one of Satan’s most successful lies!

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Death is the judgment that God spoke to Adam because of his disobedience.  But the judgment wasn’t on Adam only, but on the entire creation.  God also cursed the ground for Adam’s sake (Genesis 3:17-19) and even now, the whole creation groans under the Curse (Romans 8:22).

Evolution makes the Bible seem nonsense.  Evolution says that the history of the earth before the appearance of man was defined by death, disease, and struggle.  Death is the way things are and, when Homo sapien finally appeared, they were mortal just like everything else.  This backward way of thinking has led many Christians into gross error in their interpretation of Scripture.  The YouTube channel, Inspiring Philosophy, made a comment bordering on heresy.  In a video titled, TOP TEN Biblical Problems for Young Earth Creationism, they made the following claim:

The implication numerous scholars have pointed out is Adam and Eve were already mortal and the only way they obtained immortality in the Garden was eating continuously from the Tree of Life. To make them mortal again, all God had to do was prevent access to this sacred tree. But that means humans were already mortal before the Fall and only granted immortality through a special fruit – not because they were created with immortal bodies….  This is also supported by the fact that Adam is called dust, which is an idiom in the Bible to denote that one is mortal. In Genesis, it might just be metaphorical language to denote that he was a mortal human – meaning Adam was mortal before the Fall which implies death was a possibility before sin entered. [bold added for emphasis]

Yikes!!  What terrible hermeneutics!  

The gospel is seen in the entire Bible, even in Genesis.  When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, they were ashamed and tried to hide themselves.  They tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves but the Bible says God killed an animal and covered them with the skin of the animal.  What a sobering realization must have set in for the first couple when they looked upon that dead animal and saw the terrible consequence of their disobedience. 

That act ushered in an era of sacrifices where the shedding of blood was made to cover our sins (Hebrews 9:22).  The practice continued until the appearance of Christ - the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).  His was the final sacrifice and now our sins are covered by His blood and righteousness.  Praise God!!

So you see, it is a big deal.  Understanding that God commanded the animals to eat plants was part of His plan that there would be no death - not even the death of animals.  The death of animals is evidence that He judges sin.  Christ’s death on the Cross was His plan to deal with sin.  We also have His promise of a restored creation where there is no more death.  

God said it, so I know it’s so!!

Lies evolutionists tell: evolution is compatible with the Bible

People who militantly defend evolution (AKA evolutionists) like to look down their noses on the “lay” public and smugly drone on about how science is the key to knowledge, how evolution is the most rigorously tested theory in science, and how they only go where the evidence leads. If that were true, why do they feel the need to tell lies to support their theory? I'm not talking about a mere difference of opinion – like how I believe the earth is around 6,000 years old and they think it's 4 billion years old. I'm talking about continuously repeating things that are objectively false. The sad thing is, many members of the public have heard these lies repeated so often, they assume they are true.

I've written series in the past where I list 5 or 10 of some of the most egregious examples but I'm not going to write a series now. Instead, I'm going to visit this topic from time to time and make each, entire post about a single lie. If you want to read all the posts published under this topic, click “lies evolutionists tell” in the label cloud in the left column.

Are we ready? Then on to the next lie!

EVOLUTION IS COMPATIBLE WITH THE BIBLE

https://unsplash.com/@tonyzebastian

Many evolutionists try to encourage the idea that Christianity is compatible with evolution. While telling educators how to “deal with design” (that is, “intelligent design” or “creationism”), Nature Magazine had this advice:

Scientists would do better to offer some constructive thoughts of their own. For religious scientists, this may involve taking the time to talk to students about how they personally reconcile their beliefs with their research. Secular researchers should talk to others in order to understand how faiths have come to terms with science. All scientists whose classes are faced with such concerns should familiarize themselves with some basic arguments as to why evolution, cosmology and geology are not competing with religion.

That certainly sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Don't be fooled! Evolutionists will say anything if they think there is a chance of changing someone's mind. They're seldom sincere, though. They try to convince the wavering creationists that there is somehow “middle-ground” between “science and faith,” while all the while, they secretly hold any notion of “intelligent design” in contempt.

On the pro-evolution site, TalkOrigins.org, in response to a Christian's comment on homology, the rabidly atheistic P. Z. Myers had this reply:

The problem with your argument is that in adult human beings, these features have been so highly derived that they no longer bear any resemblance at all to their homologs in other animals. It's all well and good to claim that it's an example of reuse by a designer, but why would a designer think the most efficient way to build a tiny ear bone is to reorganize a substantial chunk of branchial structure in an embryo?... It makes sense if every feature of an organism is the product of its history, but it doesn't make sense if you want to argue independent design with appropriate reuse of common elements. Unless, that is, you're willing to argue that the Designer is wasteful, incompetent, and lazy.

Do you see what I mean? Compromising on Genesis for the sake of making the Bible seem compatible with secular theories of origins accomplishes nothing. In their own words, secular evolutionists see God as a lazy, incompetent, wasteful moron with less than half a brain. Why would anyone want to forsake the omnipotent Creator of the Bible who spoke the universe into existence and replace Him with the dim-witted god of evolution who can't create a way out of a wet paper bag?

There are several reasons we should reject the idea of “theistic evolution.”

It is contrary to a plain reading of the Scriptures

One way to “reconcile” the Bible with evolution is to claim the creation account isn't meant to be understood “literally” but rather as a poem or a parable. Genesis, they will say, only tells us that God created everything but science tells us how. I beg to differ. The Bible very clearly tells us how; God spoke and it happened. Genesis 1 offers a detailed account of the creation week. It's very specific, detailing the events of each day: on the first day, evening and morning, God did this; on the second day, evening and morning, God did this; etc.

Furthermore, the Bible says that God created Adam from the dust of the earth. These passages are not ambiguous. There is nothing in them to suggest we need to look somewhere else to determine how long “six days” or that suggest Adam evolved from some non-human primate.

What other parts of the Bible do we read in the same way some Christians read Genesis? Think about these questions:

How many days was Jonah in the whale?

How many days was Lazarus dead?

How many days did Joshua march around Jericho?

How many days did God take to create the universe?

It's easy to answer the first three questions. It should be just as easy to answer the fourth. Yet, because some Christians put their faith in science above the revealed word of God, they get confused over what should be an easy question. How many days was Jonah in the whale? “Three,” they answer. How many days did God take to create the universe? “We don't know,” they answer. What? Um, yes, we do know!

It diminishes the character of God

Proverbs 8:36 says that all who hate God love death. If they love death, the theory of evolution has it in abundance. Evolution, of course, is a very slow, cruel process. Richard Dawkins describes nature this way:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives whimpering with fear, others are slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.

An often spoken criticism used by atheists is, if God is good, why do bad things happen? To believe in evolution is to believe God intended the world to be full of death, disease, and suffering. It is saying that bad things happen because God wants them to happen and the bleak picture Dawkins paints of nature is exactly how God planned things to be. It would be a very capricious god who would waste billions of years of pain and extinction only to look back on everything he had made and describe it all as “very good” (Genesis 1:34).

It diminishes the Person of Jesus

Jesus came to fulfill the law. He said this overtly in Matthew 5:17, Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. But what does it mean to “fulfill” the law? He accomplished this in several ways. A Savior was necessitated by Adam's sin in the garden. When Adam fell, he brought death into the world and death has passed on to all men because all have sinned (Romans 5:12). But even as God judged with the Curse, He also promised a Redeemer, the Seed of the woman who would crush the head of the Serpent (Genesis 3:15). Jesus fulfilled that promise.

When Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible says their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked (Genesis 3:7). They tried to cover themselves with fig leaves but God killed an animal and made skins to cover their nakedness. This is the first recorded death in the Bible and ushered in an era of sacrifices where the followers of God would sacrifice animals as a covering for their sins. Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. But the system of sacrifices proscribed in the Old Testament was only temporary; they were pictures of the ultimate sacrifice that would come: Jesus, the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The death of Jesus did away with the need for animal sacrifices. He fulfilled the Law by covering our sins permanently with His own blood.

But what if there was no Adam? No first sin? No Fall? According to theistic evolution, death is just the way it's always been and not the judgment for sin. Then what did Jesus fulfill? It would be like having the answer to a question that was never asked.

It gives the wrong impression of death

The Bible is very clear that death is the judgment for sin. There are several passages that illustrate this: For the wages of sin is death, Romans 6:23. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, Romans 5:12. He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, James 5:20, et al. We die physically because we are descended from Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22) but, after we die, the lost will be judged for their own sins before the Great White Throne (Revelation 20:11-14). At that Judgment, everyone whose name is not written in the Book of Life, is cast into the Lake of Fire; this is called, the second death (Revelation 20:14-15).

Death is the key to evolution. You see, it's not just that death happens during evolution, death is prerequisite to evolution. It's the hero of the story. Yet in spite of this, I still think that most of the people who believe in evolution never fully grasp exactly how critical a role death plays.

Natural selection is sometimes described as the “survival of the fittest.” This must also mean the demise of the unfit! Because it plays such a key role in evolution, some people almost regard death as noble.

Biologos, a group that identifies itself as Christian, has an article titled, Death and Rebirth: The Role of Extinction in Evolution. Wow, “death and rebirth”! It almost seems to put evolution on equal footing with the Resurrection! In the article, the author makes this claim:

Extinction is actually a common feature of life on earth when viewed over long (e.g. geological) timescales. By some estimates, over 99% of the species that have ever lived have gone extinct [this is also a lie, by the way].... Such an extinction event (of a single species, or perhaps a handful of species) alters the environment of other remaining species in an ecosystem. This, in turn, may influence the ability of some of these remaining species to reproduce compared to other species.... As the ecosystem landscape shifts due to loss of species, new biological opportunities, or niches, might arise. These new niches are then available to support new species to fill them.

There you go. Animals go extinct but that makes way for new animals to evolve. It's the circle of life. Some things live and some things die and it's good! Tsk, tsk! The role of death in evolution is the complete opposite of what death truly is. Death is an intruder into the creation. It is the consequence of Adam's sin and later, of our own sins. It is an enemy that will one day be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). Death should be dreaded by the lost and they should seek a way to avoid it. The gospel – the good news – is that there is life in Jesus!!

The plain understanding of the Bible is the opposite of some scientific theories in many areas. It's not debatable. So how do evolutionists make their theories “fit” with the Bible? Do they tweak their theories? Of course not. In order to make the Bible compatible with evolution, we must compromise on what the Bible says. That's exactly what too many Christians do. Their questionable hermeneutics not only make a mockery of a straightforward reading of the Bible, they seldom accomplish the intended goal of making Scripture fit with evolution.

Look, scientists teach science. I get it. The prevailing scientific theories regarding origins are evolution and the Big Bang so these are what are being taught in science classrooms. Again, I get it. But their scientific credentials do not qualify them to tell me how to interpret Scripture! Why do they feel the need to say this? I'll tell you: it's not because they really care how well their theory comports with the Bible but, rather, they say it in order to trick hesitant, creationist students into compromising on their beliefs. They're lying. Shame on them.