News

What would you say? Class 12/12/21 (Thanks to Michelle for the write up) Steve provided a link explaining some history on the grandsons of Noah. They populated parts of Europe, Russia, Asia, Africa. Some of the grandsons were worshipped and treated like gods, one became 2 of the Greek gods- Zeus and Thor. People were named after these grandsons also..the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus records that the people who were called Galatians or Gauls in his day (c. AD 93) were previously called Gomerites (descendants of Gomer - Noah's first grandson). It is interesting to note that the word ‘Aryan’, which so fascinated Adolf Hitler, is a form of the word ‘Iran’. Hitler wanted to produce a pure Aryan ‘race’ of supermen. But the very term ‘Aryan’ signifies a mixed line of Semites and Japhethites! The first generations after the Flood lived to be very old, with some men outliving their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. This set them apart. The 16 grandsons of Noah were the heads of their family clans, which became large populations in their respective areas. Several things happened: People in various areas called themselves by the name of the man who was their common ancestor. They called their land, and often their major city and major river, by his name. Sometimes the various nations fell off into ancestor worship. When this happened, it was natural for them to name their god after the man who was the ancestor of all of them, or to claim their long-living ancestor as their god. All of this means that the evidence has been preserved in a way that can never be lost, and all the ingenuity of man cannot erase. We will now examine it.  Please scan/read the link- lots to overwhelm and give you a history lesson!  Conclusion: We have only taken the briefest glance at Noah’s sixteen grandsons,14 but enough has been said to show that they really did live, that they were who the Bible says they were, and that their descendants are identifiable on the pages of history. Not only is the Bible not a collection of myths and legends, but it stands alone as the key to the history of the earliest ages of the world. https://creation.com/the-sixteen-grandsons-of-noah The sixteen grandsons of Noah - creation.com Some of the Gomerites migrated further to what is now called Wales. The Welsh historian, Davis, records a traditional Welsh belief that the descendants of Gomer ‘landed on the Isle of Britain from France, about three hundred years after the flood’. 2 He also records that the Welsh language is called Gomeraeg (after their ancestor Gomer). Other members of their clan settled along the way ... creation.com Then we continued on with the Bible Project, seeing an overview of the 2nd half of Genesis and seeing the link between the 2 halves- God's promise to Abraham. The first part begins in the garden where we see the downward spiral of self-destruction and ends in the tower of Babel when the rebellious humanity is scattered by God. The second half is about one man's family. The link between two halves is Abraham- through him and his family will find God's blessings. God is trying to restore the humanity of the goodness of the garden, his rescue plan for the whole of humanity. Each generation God renews that promise and uses them to bless their future. However, there is lots of dysfunction in this family. Joseph's famous line we need to remember: You planned all this for evil, but God planned it for good and to save people's lives.  https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/torah-genesis-2/ Watch: Genesis 12-50 Torah Series Video | BibleProject™ The Israelites Delivered. This brings us to the second book of the Torah, Exodus. Here, the Israelites are enslaved to the Egyptians, and the first half of the book focuses on how God raises up Moses to deliver His people from the Egyptians. bibleproject.com So Abraham offered Lot his nephew to choose where he wanted to settle his family because they were both prosperous. Lot chose to settle close to Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you remember the rest of the story?  What would you say if someone says God Didn't Punish Sodom and Gomorrah for Homosexuality?  1. The context of Genesis makes the meaning of the Sodom story clear. 2. Another scripture confirms the connection between Sodom and homosexuality. https://watwouldyousay.org/god-didnt-punish-sodom-and-gomorrah-for-homosexuality-2/ God Didn't Punish Sodom and Gomorrah for Homosexuality - What Would You Say You’re in a conversation about the Bible and homosexuality and someone says to you “God didn’t punish Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality, he punished them for inhospitality, promiscuity, and sexual violence.” What would you say? In the book of Genesis, God sent angels in the form of men to visit the town of Sodom in ... whatwouldyousay.org What about business owners' who do not want to serve people who are homosexual? Cake maker? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who had refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court’s decision was narrow, and it left open the larger question of whether a business can discriminate against gay men and lesbians based on rights protected by the First Amendment. We all provide services to others even though we don't with their actions, we just love and serve as Jesus would.  It was brought up that sexuality is now more about what you feel rather than the previous argument that it is genetic makeup.  https://whatwouldyousay.org/is-being-gay-genetic/ Is Being Gay Genetic? - What Would You Say You’re in a conversation and someone says, “People can’t help being gay. It’s part of their genetic makeup.” What would you say? Because the search to find a biological cause for sexual orientation has been largely unsuccessful, it has continued to change. whatwouldyousay.org First, genetics only play a small role in determining sexual orientation. Second, genetics cannot predict whether a person is gay or straight. Third, sexuality is not WHO you are, it’s HOW you are. More discussion about Dr. Christopher Yuan in the future. (speaker from the video above) Hope you found some of this interesting and plan to attend future discussions. Please suggest topics you'd like to discuss.  Next meeting: Dec 19th, 2021 on Miracles

There are a lot of links, and I recommend taking the time to watch them. Having a little trouble formatting the links for Faithlife, but it is also on FBC Apologetics on Facebook. I didn’t include the super dry video explaining what amino acids are. This class attacks Darwin’s guess of how life might have started… What is the goal of this class? Not just today, but the whole class? To convince us mortals that we have value. So much value that God loves us, and that Jesus died in our place. And that we are made in God’s image, and He has a plan for our lives: we have amazing value. So I think that God is good. Doesn’t everyone? What would it take to convince someone that God is good, and that He loves us, and that we are actually made in His image? Well, for one thing, you have to believe in God first, right? What are we told almost every day about where we came from? Sometimes it is easy to miss it, but it is the main message in just about every area of our lives, and that is that WE EVOLVED. What does the Bible say about where/how we came from? God created us. What does Darwinian evolution say? Random mutations based on natural selection. No need for God. No need for God? 
What are the implications when you have no god? No foundation for ethics, since natural selection, means survival of the fittest, and if we are weak in this dog-eat-dog world, then the mighty don’t care about the weak. It also means that there is no meaning in life, and if we are just chemical reactions, then we have no freedom of choice. (Prof. William Provine of Cornell) The goal of the class is to show that there is only one plausible explanation of how we got here, and if God actually did create us, then there is hope, and all those desperate people without hope don’t have to end it all. Suicide is nearing an epidemic. If God didn’t create us, how did we get here? Evolution talks about changes in existing species. But Darwin’s book wasn’t titled “how species change over time”, but it was titled “The Origin of Species”. There is no way that Darwin could have known about the complexity of the cell. But we know better now, but almost all the academics still hold to the lie. Did you hear about the $10 million dollar prize to the first person who can prove how life started, and how the genetic information got into DNA? It was on Breakpoint. The point is that nobody knows how life started, and evolution has so many holes in it, that they are reaching for another explanation of how life started. https://uncommondescent.com/.../probability-of-a-single.../ In case you didn’t catch it, the chances of forming a single strand of protein 150 amino acids long in just the right order to form a specific function is 10^167. That’s one in ten with 167 zeros behind it. The time to make that one protein by chance is 4.6 billion years, and that is if all the puddles on earth were working at it at the same time at a rate of 100 billion tries every second. What?! And that’s just one protein! There are 42 million proteins in just one cell. The average age of a protein before it dies and needs replacing? Measured in hours, sometimes days (or longer for super complex proteins like the ones in your eyes). We watched a 3-minute video which is a really cool animation of the life of the cell, made by Harvard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y I also will include the long version, which has all the medical terminology. Remember: all those things you see on the screen are proteins forming very specific roles. The scientific community is using 170-year-old science to try and explain the origin of life and has refused to entertain the other option on the table, namely creation. Here is the longer version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzcTgrxMzZk Back 100 years ago, they used to say anything was possible, given enough time. Back then they thought the universe was eternal. With the help of Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein, they discovered that the universe did actually have a beginning, so there is not enough time for any random protein-making to construct a very precise molecular machine to form only one function in a cell. You can read this excerpt from the Breakpoint broadcast, or listen to the full version with the link. https://breakpoint.org/turning-chemicals-into-code/... Back in January, at a meeting held at the Royal Society in London, a team of scientists and investors announced the largest prize ever offered to solve a scientific mystery. Organized by engineer and business consultant Perry Marshall, the whopping prize of $10 million (ten times the Nobel Prize payout) will be given to any person or team who can “arrange for a digital communication system to emerge or self-evolve without…explicitly designing the system.” The point of the contest is to learn where the genetic code came from and how it became the basis for all life. The winning experiment, according to their website, “must generate an encoder that sends digital code to a decoder,” and transmit at least five bits of information or roughly half as much as a comparable segment of DNA. In other words, to claim the prize, you must bring into existence the functional equivalent of the first living cell, without intelligently designing the system. The prize is so big because evolution “leaves two things completely unexplained: How did life get going in the first place, and what is the origin of the genetic code.” With refreshing honesty, he continued, “I cannot see personally how DNA could have been there at the beginning. After all, it requires the cell to enable it and to reproduce, and it requires the cell also to correct errors in that reproduction and replication process.” Perry Marshall explained why he organized the prize by recalling a debate about the origin of life he once had with his brother. Sons of a pastor, Marshall offered a standard argument from design, but his brother retorted that natural processes were sufficient to explain all of life’s complexity. Marshall wasn’t convinced. As he was writing what would later become his bestselling book on computer networks, he realized that “mathematically [DNA and ethernet] are identical. It’s encoding and decoding. It is a communication system…Genetics is digital communication.” Intelligent design theorists have argued that information, like what is stored and communicated in DNA, has only one known source – an intelligent agent. To produce a system like DNA through unguided processes would not only be to do something that’s never been done; it would be to do something never before observed in the history of science. But, it gets even worse for those hoping to snag that $10 million. As Dr. Noble reminded press and colleagues, DNA requires a cell to function…and cells, as far as we know, require DNA. To get one, you need the other. In other words, to win the money, competitors must not only put together the equivalent of functioning genetic code “without cheating,” they have to create the molecular machines that use, replicate, and edit that code. The bottom line? The origin of life and of the information that makes it possible remains the most significant challenge to a naturalistic worldview. The only plausible explanation for how these incredible systems came into being is intelligent design, precisely what those competing for this prize are forbidden from using. Don’t get me wrong. $10 million is a lot of money, but, it’s still not enough to make the impossible possible.

"...At the same time, record numbers of Christians-especially those 35 and under-are leaving the church and abandoning belief in God and Jesus Christ. Why? Are our worship services poorly done? Are we failing to love and enfold people into the church? Are we doing a bad job of fostering relationships and promoting a healthy congregational life? It may come as a shock to learn that none of these are the main reason. In a recent Barna poll, researchers tried to see why millennials (22 to 37 years old) are abandoning the church and the faith. They Identified six reasons for the exodus: 1- The church is overprotective and fails to expose people to anti-Christian ideas. 2-The church's teaching is shallow. 3-The church is antagonistic to science and fails to help believers interact with scientific claims. 4-The church treats sexuality simplistically and judgmentally. 5- The church makes exclusivist claims. 6-The church is dismissive of doubters. Note that every single reason involves a failure to engage the life of the mind and employ apologetics to answer people's questions." -J.P. Moreland, in the forward to Paul Gould's book CULTURAL APOLOGETICS Any suggestions? Let me know...

Sunday's thought: Why is there evil in the world? Of all the questions that Christians get asked, probably the one that most Christians dread more than the others, is,” If your God is so powerful, why is there evil in the world?” How would you answer that? I think you have to know the person a little bit, to see where they are coming from, but a good guess would be that if they are trying to trap you in a question like this, they are probably coming from an atheistic or materialistic worldview.  What is a materialistic worldview?  One that sees no outside god forces at work now or ever.  Everything that was done or will be done is a result of purely natural processes.   When looking at this from a moral standpoint, how did we get the idea of what is right and wrong?  Well, God told us.  First with the ten commandments, and later with books in the old testament, and Jesus simplified it to love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. But what if you don’t believe God did that?  Where is your moral framework? If you believe in the worldview of evolution and natural selection, then in this dog eat dog world, the strong shouldn’t care about the weak.  Morals are then based on the ideas of a charismatic leader, or 51% of the vote, or the guy with the most weapons: might makes right. Last century let us find out what happens with that worldview, with the failed social experiments of Communist Soviet Union, Communist Mao China, Nazi Germany, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, genocide in Rwanda among many others; these countries killed hundreds of millions of lives; most of them their own citizens!!!  Why?  The leaders and members of the revolution saw it as a necessary thing to rid their world of those they saw as counter productive.  Of getting rid of the undesirables.     So...Killing millions of people:  BAD. Killing millions of anything?   ??? When cleaning a counter with a disinfectant, how many of us hold a moment of silence for the dead bacteria?  No?  Of course not. Mice in the kitchen or squirrels in the attic?  Undesirables.  God gives us dominion over the world and the animals in it, so we shouldn’t torture, but if it is an unhealthy pest, we are OK with getting rid of them.  One or two pests?  OK. Killing 6 squirrels?  About about 60?  6,000 squirrels?  6 million squirrels?  How about 6 million Jews? If our culture’s view of what is good and what is evil is determined by things like, “Don’t be like Nazi Germany” Then will that cover us for the most part?  But where do you draw the line on what is evil?  We all love babies; tickling a bay for 2 seconds is probably OK, right?  How about 2 minutes?  How about 2 days?  What guidance do we have to help us know where to draw the line? Today’s culture has something that they go by called moral relativism, which means if it is good for you, it is your truth.  Your morals.  You decide on what is good or bad, depending on how it makes you feel.   Is sex trafficing evil?  Is partial birth abortion?  Is sacrificing virgins to the sun god evil?  Or offering your neighbors to the flying spaghetti monster? We Christians, and most in our areas of influence and neighborhoods would say yes that is evil.  Some cultures, not so much, so without a moral framework based on God’s revelation, determining a culture's morals on how you define evil is not easy. But let’s say you agree on what is evil.  Why does God allow evil in the world?  If you were God, what would you say? Should God kill everyone who is about to do evil?  If we are all made in God’s image, how does that work? Is evil sin?  Probably.  Are all sins evil?   Is lying a sin?  Is lying evil?  A few years ago there was this story going around that the guy who played Captain Kangaroo was a marine sniper and Mister Rogers was an Army hero in Vietnam and the reason he wore sweaters was to cover up all his tattoos.   That was a doozie!  They never even went to war.  Where people come up with these things I don’t know.  If lying is evil, then getting rid of all lying by capital punishment would certainly solve the fake news problem.   If lying is sin and sin is evil, and you know the consequences of a little lie, would you be living in grace?  Or fear?  You would live in fear, and that is life in an atheistic country. Don’t lie to me!  Did you take that last cookie?  No.  Liar!  Dead!  Sounds scary. I am personally very glad that God does not kill all evil doers before they commit their crimes, because I would have been dead long before I would have been saved.  In fact, I wonder if anyone would be left. God gave us a free will.  Why did he do that?  Remember the greatest commandment?  To love your God with all your heart, soul and mind?  How would you do that if you are not free to choose?  I love my wife, and I am certain that she loves me.  Not because she has to, but because she wants to.  Love is something that grows over time.  If you read your bible and pray, you will get to know God better and better, and will get to love him.  It is your choice.  Your free will.  God doesn’t want a bunch of airheads who don’t do anything without being told.    But with free will comes bad decisions, too.  Good decisions result in good outcomes.  Bad decisions result in victims.  We are sinners by nature.  And some of us do evil things by our choice.   So first ask: how would you define evil, and why?  Where is the line between good and bad? Then ask if you were God, how would you get rid of evil?  Should God kill all people before they do bad things?  And how bad does bad have to be? People with free will can do bad things.  Then ask if all decision making should be done by the state, and not by individuals.

I am not sure if both videos from YouTube will work on Faithlife, but we'll give it a try... Part of the New Age/ transcendentalism worldview is the belief in reincarnation. The Bible says it ain't so, but what do we do with all the experiences others have had with remembering past lives? There have been several reasons for people "remembering" things in the past before they were born; natural explanations that make sense, as in their subconsciously listening to a TV program in the other room while they were sleeping, and stuff like that, and that accounts for a fair amount of the reincarnation experiences. But, what about the times when a natural explanation doesn't work? I am going to play two YouTube videos, one from a pro-reincarnation group about a 3 year-old boy who remembers his murder from 4 years ago, and shows people where he was buried, and the murder weapon. The second video is an interview with Irwin Lutzer about a conversation he had with a woman on a plane about her past life in Vermont. Hopefully the videos will work, then I will resume after them. First, the boy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nLbRqX0uLw and now the video from Erwin Lutzer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5LOJE0lYQs People who try to solve these things sometimes forget that we live in a world beyond our understanding. Shirley McLaine talked about her "spirit guides" and it sounds like that is what is at work here. When you dig deep into these stories, several of them end up having small kids with visitors that only they can see in the middle of the night, that tell them things. And as is the case in the video, the adult woman had nice beings dressed in white that would tell her things. Really need about an hour to go over these things, but that is another class, another time, I guess.

I was asked to post the stuff from Facebook onto Faithlife since there are many that don't do Facebook. Currently discussing worldviews... An introduction to Worldviews: Worldviews are what we think makes the world go around: "Is there a God?" is the biggest one, but with the new attention to BLM and marxism, a look back at our most recent century might be a good idea: Ideas are not isolated concepts. They have consequences: good ideas have good consequences, and bad ideas have victims. The 20th century was repleat with examples of bad ideas and their bad consequences, especially in two aspects. First, it was a century of UTOPIAN ideas. Economic ideas like marxism (including socialism and communism) promised to make the world convenient, productive, and free of disease. Yet each set of these utopian ideas was based on a faulty worldview, and the story of the 20th century is one of bloodshed and aggression. In hindsight it's easy to see what happened. Remove God and there is no suitable replacement. Second, last century was one of MARGINALIZING ideas. The century began with the eugenics movement (Margarett Sanger and her hatred of black people and also of the "undesirables" of society led to mass sterilizations of the black and poor and led to Planned Parenthood). Next, the attempt by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews , and then the millions of aborted children at the end of the century, and we are just barely scratching the surface of failed ideas (add Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Khmer Rouge, and several other genocides). Each of these reflect ideas that people are not valuable (image of God) persons. Worldviews exert their greatest influence in offering definitions, and faulty worldviews define words, and then ideas and persons, in destructive ways. (Currently reading Making Sense Of Your World: A Biblical Worldview)