Segue into the next phase of Darwin versus God
My Christian friends, this is primarily for you although non-believers are welcome as always!
Take a look at this picture, because at first it is not apparent what it is. There is a stetch of highway in Alberta, Canada, where the Elk were continually being hit because they were crossing the road or on the bridge on the road above where they endangered both themselves and the vehicles and passengers, as Elk are pretty massive road hazards. The Canadians built a bridge for the Elk and the Elk now avoid both roads and take their own personal bridge across, thank you very much!
The point is that it is dangerous for both the Elk and automobiles to take the same path and that is true of Christians and the unbelievers. There is a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads to death and destruction. Which leads me to this preliminary and introductory post -
A song by the Newsboys, written by Peter Furler and Steve Taylor:
Lost The Sky Again
Like a criminal guilty on all counts,
rattling his cage with every ounce of resolve he never had,
I was convicted.
Then I took the pardon and the walls came down,
but I must like it here,
'cause I keep hanging around for a better suit,
and an escort, and a winning lottery ticket.
First we waited for miracles.
Then we needed a sign.
Now we're here to confess
we've wasted the time.
Every blade will wither and fade,
as the old man dies again.
Season pass, we're clinging to grass,
'cause we've lost the sky again.
Like a woman trying to give birth,
she strains, she labors, she's not sure if it's worth the suffering,
as she wonders, "How long?"
When I first heard the rumor you were coming back
I confess my impatience, I guess I lost track
of what I'm to persevere for,
Of the reason you put me here for.
Back then it was any day now.
Never dreamed we were wrong.
Now we're shaking our heads, wondering, "how long?"
Every blade... I feel a moment of your perfect love.
I catch a glimmer of your sweet grace.
But it only makes me long for the day
when I look full in your face.
Every blade will wither and fade,
as the old man dies again.
Season pass, we're clinging to grass,
'cause we've lost the sky again.
~~~~~~~~
It is time to change focus for awhile. Some commenters want me to get on a stepladder and take a magnifying glass to something on the Big Oz Head when Toto has already pulled the curtain aside to reveal the powerless little faker. I don't care if there is an article that demonstrates that hundreds of layers of snow can leave traces in Arctic or Antarctic ice or whether it is only a hundred or even several dozen, it is minutiae not worthy of our time. Neo-Darwinists have massive problems with the basics of their worldview and so they try to get us to look at tiny little aspects of the problems. They are crying, "Don't throw me in that Brar' patch!" and I am not listening.
No, it is time to spend some time with my brothers and sisters in Christ who have convinced themselves that Darwin and God co-exist quite nicely. First of all, since Charles Darwin denied God and refused to receive Christ, he isn't hanging out with God right now...and his hypotheses don't belong next to the Bible, either.
We Christians have far too often fallen prey to the trap of ORTHODOX THINKING. We like sheep get in line with the rest of the flock and blindly follow without looking at where everyone is going. Remember that Paul praised the Bereans for not just believing everything Paul preached, but first opened the Scriptures to compare Paul's doctrine with what God had said.
"Then I took the pardon and the walls came down,
but I must like it here,
'cause I keep hanging around for a better suit,
and an escort, and a winning lottery ticket. "
Honestly, I went to seminary with a couple of guys who decided to buy a big house with a balloon loan since "Jesus was coming back any day now and the world would get stuck with the mortgage." Now, the attitude of cheating someone out of their rightful goods/payment was ungodly anyway, but there were all these guys believing popular preachers and TV and radio preachers telling them that a rapture was going to happen by 1984...by 1988...1994...2000...and on and on and on. These were young men studying to be pastors and school administrators and teachers!
"First we waited for miracles.
Then we needed a sign.
Now we're here to confess
we've wasted the time."
The fact is, a good portion of the church needs to repent for the attitude that God is planning to come down and snatch them away from their problems at any moment. Another idea is that, if we have faith and give money to God, he will give us great riches in return. Thinking like that makes rich men of shysters like Robert Tilton and gives God a bad name. In countless churches and televised services around the planet each week, men wearing thousand-dollar suits will preach to the crowd about the healing and money and jobs and fame they will reap if they believe hard enough and (of course) give their ministry enough money "by faith."
God is not here to make our temporal lives more comfortable or upgrade us from a Ford to a Mercedes! (Ask Janis, she knew better). God is sovereign and has a plan with eternal ends and consequences. He wants us to follow His Word and the leading of His Spirit and, in doing so, we will often reap the consequences of good behavior. But we will also suffer for His sake if we are doing things right and there is no guarantee we will not get sick or die young. God promises us an abundant life, not a life of leisure and riches! We tend to reap what we sew, both good and evil, whether saved or sinner. I have often prayed to ask God that someone I love, or myself, would NOT reap the consequences of a foolish or selfish act. But He is not obligated to bail us out.
God made us to have fellowship with Him forever and enjoy the wonders of an eternity beyond imagination. We screwed the whole thing up the first time, Jesus Christ had to come and live and die and be raised again to give us a second chance. Right now God is focused on giving the entire world that second chance. He hears our prayers and I am sure He intervenes in millions of situations every day but His first priority is bringing as many men, women and children into relationship with Him as will, until He decides it is time to end this temporal world and judgement time begins.
"Like a woman trying to give birth,
she strains, she labors, she's not sure if it's worth the suffering,
as she wonders, "How long?"
When I first heard the rumor you were coming back
I confess my impatience, I guess I lost track
of what I'm to persevere for,
Of the reason you put me here for.
Back then it was any day now.
Never dreamed we were wrong.
Now we're shaking our heads, wondering, "how long?"
Every blade... I feel a moment of your perfect love.
I catch a glimmer of your sweet grace.
But it only makes me long for the day
when I look full in your face.
Every blade will wither and fade,
as the old man dies again.
Season pass, we're clinging to grass,
'cause we've lost the sky again. "
So now I wonder how many of us who name Christ as Savior have lost the sky and are focused on the grass? How long will it be? Well, you will probably live and have kids and grand kids and maybe even great-grand kids before you get old and die. Then Psalms 17:15 will really mean something to you:
As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness;
I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.
Christian, just because "everyone" believes in a rapture and a tribulation period, that doesn't make it so. Just because "everyone" in your church thinks you must be baptized to be saved has no impact on the truth. The wise Christian studies his Bible carefully, as it says in II Timothy 2:14-16, and concentrates on truth while avoiding gossip and trendy rumors and new moves of some sort of spirit.
Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.
Too many of my brothers and sisters just believe what the majority is saying and doing without bothering to check with God. Thus, we have something called Theistic Evolution, a preposterous combination of atheistic fairy tales and a Creator God who doesn't want or need them.
Lemmings follow lemmings in mass migrations. They don't actually tumble off of cliffs (the footage commonly shown was a gimmick, a Disney photographer set up some kind of turntable to hurl the creatures out into space!) but they do sometimes head off in dangerous directions like a stretch of water that is beyond them to cross and drown. It is true that the leaders will sometimes come to a cliff and halt, but the relentless crowd behind them presses forward and sends the leaders over the edge.
Don't be a lemming. Know why you believe what you believe. If you have doubts about a literal six days of creation, I have a challenge for you! Come with me on a journey through the beginning of Genesis and let's look at the Bible language and the evidence that we can see for ourselves today and consider whether God was telling us the truth or a whimsical parable when He claimed when and how He created the Universe. My next series is going to go verse by verse through the creation story in Genesis and bring in the observations of modern scientists and consider whether Darwin can or should be shoe-horned in somewhere.