It Is Written

In the Beginning

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: John Bradshaw (Host), Mortensen

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Series Code: IIW

Program Code: IIW001396A


00:06 It has stood the test of time, God's book, the Bible.
00:16 Still relevant in today's complex world.
00:21 It Is Written ... sharing hope around the globe.
00:35 Thanks for joining me today. I'm John Bradshaw
00:37 and this is It Is Written.
00:40 [Music] On February 12 in the year 1809,
00:44 two men were born on either side of
00:46 the Atlantic Ocean who would go on to profoundly
00:49 affect the world. In Kentucky on that day
00:53 was born the man who would go on to become
00:55 the 16th President of the United States of America
00:58 - Abraham Lincoln - the man who would sign
01:00 the emancipation proclamation and lead the nation through
01:03 the turmoil of the Civil War. And on that very same day,
01:07 in Shewsbury, England, Charles Darwin
01:11 entered the world. Now, although he was far
01:14 from the first person to propose the idea of evolution,
01:16 Darwin went on to become known as
01:18 the Father of Evolution. He came to view what he saw
01:23 in the natural world as being explainable
01:26 by natural processes, and in 1859 he published
01:30 the book, "On the Origin of Species"
01:33 or by it's full name, "On the Origin of Species
01:36 by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation
01:39 of Favoured Races In the Struggle for Life".
01:42 It was a book that shook the world.
01:46 It's fair to say that prior to Darwin,
01:48 the western world was "largely" a creationist world.
01:52 But today, things are very different.
01:56 Gallup polls, in the United States reveal that while
01:58 nearly half of Americans believe in creationism,
02:01 32% - 1 in 3 more or less believe in evolution guided
02:05 by God, and 15% believe in atheistic evolution.
02:10 TV scientist Bill Nye - as quoted by CNN - as having
02:14 "slammed creationism", saying that if people
02:18 ignored evolutionary theory their worldview became "crazy",
02:22 and he urged adults not to teach biblical
02:26 creation to their children. So, what can a person
02:29 safely believe? The Bible begins with the words
02:33 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
02:37 But a lot of people don't agree. I recently traveled
02:41 to Petersburg in Northern Kentucky,
02:43 near Cincinnati, Ohio, and I visited
02:45 the Creation Museum, where I spoke with scientist
02:48 Dr Terry Mortenson about creation and evolution.
02:53 I began by asking Dr Mortenson where the idea came from
02:56 that the Earth is millions of years old.
03:00 The idea of millions of years did not come from the rocks
03:04 and the fossils. It came from certain assumptions
03:07 that were used to interpret the rocks and the fossils
03:10 and those assumptions came out of antibiblical world views,
03:15 Deism, Atheism, where people rejected
03:17 the Biblical view of history. In contrast,
03:21 for the first 1800 years of church history
03:24 and for 1400 years before that among the Jews,
03:27 they took the Bible as the revelation of the Creator,
03:31 the early chapters of Genesis as true history, and so
03:35 the date of 6000 years roughly comes from the chronological
03:41 information given in Genesis. You said that we didn't get
03:44 from Creationism to Evolution because somebody made a
03:49 startling scientific discovery. How did we get here?
03:52 Many people coming out of the enlightenment rejected
03:55 the Bible and they began to say: 'We need to explain everything
03:59 by time, chance and the laws of nature.'
04:03 And so they started looking at the rocks.
04:07 They looked at the rock layers and made an assumption that
04:10 there's no way that a global flood could produce what
04:14 we are looking at. I mean these rock layers
04:17 are very thick. It must have taken millions
04:20 of years to deposit those. So what's science?
04:22 Or good science? Or responsible science?
04:24 Well, the word "science" in English comes from
04:27 the Latin word for science, and originally it just
04:31 meant knowledge. And so before the modern
04:35 scientific age, theology was a science.
04:38 In fact, it was called the queen of science,
04:40 the queen of knowledge. But in the wake of
04:44 the enlightenment and the development
04:46 of modern science, science became associated with
04:49 repeatable experiments and the development
04:54 of technology and so we started to build steam engines,
04:58 and railroads and electricity and those kinds of things
05:02 and what happened in the 18th and 19th Century was
05:07 what we can call the science of geology began to develop
05:11 and it was a different kind of science,
05:15 because it wasn't reproducing things in the lab,
05:18 it was looking at things out there in the world
05:20 and trying to reconstruct the unobserved past.
05:23 John Wesley Powell was the first geologist to go into
05:27 the Grand Canyon back in the 1860's.
05:29 Well, he went into the canyon already an evolutionist
05:33 and believing in millions of years.
05:35 So when he went into the Grand Canyon and saw these
05:37 massive layers , he just began to immediately
05:41 think: "Well, slow, gradual deposition laid down
05:45 these layers, and the Colorado River has just been
05:47 flowing for millions of years to carve this canyon.
05:51 [Music] Your Father God,
06:02 Your Creator and originator is also the God of the future.
06:06 In His ability to tell us what is still ahead,
06:08 He reminds us of His sovereignty and power over all things.
06:12 To help us trust Him, God has provided amazing
06:15 evidence of His reliability, and the reliability of His Word.
06:20 Today, I'd like to send you a booklet that demonstrates
06:22 how God foretold world events with absolute accuracy
06:25 thousands of years in advance. This booklet is called,
06:29 "Can God be Trusted?" and it's absolutely FREE.
06:32 Just call 1 (800) 253-3000 and
06:35 ask for "Can God be Trusted." If the line's busy,
06:38 please keep on trying. Or write to
06:41 It Is Written, P.O. Box 6, Chattanooga, TN 37401,
06:45 and we'll mail a free copy to your address in North America.
06:50 This is It Is Written, I'm John Bradshaw,
06:53 and today we're discussing creation and evolution
06:55 with Dr Terry Mortenson from the Creation Museum
06:58 in Northern Kentucky. I think we both know that
07:01 it's common for people today to view the world as
07:04 being millions and millions of years old, and to look
07:06 at the Grand Canyon as something that was produced over long
07:09 ages of time. I asked Dr Mortenson how,
07:13 in view of the science, that he can go to the Grand Canyon
07:19 and see an all together different picture.
07:23 Well, it's because I'm going in with an eye witness testimony.
07:27 When an evolutionist goes into the Grand Canyon, it's not
07:29 even a question on the radar, could a global flood
07:34 be responsible for what I'm looking at?
07:36 Whereas when I go in that eye witness testimony
07:39 of the Creator given to us in the Book of Genesis
07:43 is in the mind and we're looking ... is there evidence
07:48 in the rocks that points to this global flood?
07:53 Give me a scientific explanation for the Grand Canyon.
07:58 Well, there's a number of things that we show people
08:02 when we go into the canyon. One is a feature that's called
08:05 "Cross-bedding." you have very strong evidence
08:08 that that this very thick layer was laid down under
08:10 an enormous amount of water, moving at a good speed.
08:15 There is another feature that we show them.
08:17 They're called Nautiloids. They are fossils that are like
08:21 an ice cream cone, a pointed ice cream cone.
08:24 And they're related to squid. They have a head sticking
08:28 out of the cone, and there's about a seven
08:33 foot thick layer in the red wall limestone that is
08:37 about 400 feet thick that is just filled with these,
08:43 and they've been spotted in different places,
08:47 all the way through this layer, all the way up near Las Vegas.
08:50 There's an estimated billion or so of these creatures buried
08:56 in this one thin layer and Steve Austin, a Ph.D.
09:00 geologist did some research on them and he took a compass
09:04 and a GPS and he plotted where he found them all along
09:08 this layer in the Grand Canyon. He noted their orientation.
09:12 I think 15% of them are buried in an upright position
09:16 with their point down. He noted that they are not
09:20 all just higally pigally in all directions, but there's
09:23 a general indication ... I can't remember if it indicates
09:27 a flow from the Southwest to the Northeast or Southeast
09:30 to the Northwest, but what he argues in a paper,
09:34 which he presented to the National Park Service,
09:36 and they were very interested, the geologists, was that this
09:40 was a massive catastrophic event, mass burial of
09:47 these creatures, and that helps to explain the orientation
09:52 and that these cones are in an upright position,
09:55 because you wouldn't expect the creature to just die a natural
09:58 death and go down and sink into the ocean floor
10:01 and just stand there perfectly upright for hundreds
10:04 or thousands of years waiting to slowly get settled.
10:07 Another feature that we show a couple of places is
10:10 the folding of rock. Now you can bend solid rock
10:14 under high temperature and pressure but when you do,
10:17 you metamorphose or you change the structure of the rock
10:21 but in these examples that we show,
10:24 the rock stays exactly the same character all the way through
10:28 the bend. Many people have seen this
10:29 on the sides of roads, that type of figure,
10:31 where you get layers that fold and this is what
10:33 you're talking about, right? Right
10:35 When you see one of these layers rather than being flat
10:37 it kinda flows this way and that way.
10:39 OK, and so what do you see when you look at these layers?
10:42 Well, what that shows ... Doesn't it show ...
10:44 taking the Evolutionist viewpoint, doesn't it show,
10:46 well, this one laid down over 150 million years,
10:49 and then the next one came, because this is what
10:52 modern science typically teaches, correct?
10:54 Yes. That they laid down
10:56 over milions of years. But it wouldn't lay down
10:58 the layers so that it all flowed the same way
11:01 and if the rock layer is being deposited slowly,
11:07 and then you had an earthquake, which is what would cause
11:11 the movement ... Right
11:13 ...it would break the rock or if there was enough stuff above,
11:18 it would, with the heat and the pressure, would allow
11:21 it to bend, but it would transform
11:23 the character of the rock in the bend, and what we see
11:27 doesn't fit that at all. What it fits is the conclusion
11:30 that those rock layers were bent when they were still
11:34 relatively soft and moist, shortly after they were
11:38 deposited, and then the northeast end of
11:40 the Grand Canyon you have the Kaibab up where
11:42 the whole mile of sediments, which the evolutionists say
11:46 represents 300 million years of time,
11:49 the whole pile is bent the same direction,
11:52 which indicates strongly to creation geologists that
11:55 the whole pile was still relatively wet and moist
11:59 and soft. See, you've got me convinced.
12:02 And as I listen to you, I say to myself: Why doesn't
12:07 everybody believe this? Well, I come back to the Bible,
12:10 because that informs my understanding of the World
12:13 and the Bible says that all of us are sinners.
12:16 We're in rebellion against our Creator and Paul says
12:20 in the book of Romans, Chapter 1 and 2,
12:22 he says that the whole Creation bears witness to the existence
12:26 and at least some of the attributes
12:29 are characteristics of God and in Chapter 2,
12:32 he says that God has written his moral law in the heart
12:35 of every person. Our conscience tells us we
12:37 either did that right or we did it wrong
12:39 and what Paul says in Romans 1 is that people, we all do this
12:43 to a greater or lesser extent. We push down the truth.
12:47 We suppress that truth because we don't want
12:50 to deal with God. We don't want to deal
12:52 with our sin. You know,
12:54 there's a lot of discussion today about Intelligent Design,
12:57 and people saying there's strong evidence for a designer
13:02 and I agree with that, but it's fairly safe to
13:06 entertain the idea of a designer as long as you don't say
13:09 who the designer is. It could be aliens
13:11 in outer space. Well, it doesn't matter.
13:14 I can live my life the way I want,
13:16 but to consider a global flood and a young earth,
13:19 you're now face to face with the reality of a God
13:24 that the Bible describes is not only loving and merciful
13:28 and patient, but Holy and just. So if a person is not prepared
13:35 to really face that truth, they're going to suppress
13:39 the truth. They're going to find any other
13:41 explanation to evade that. It's not just Atheists
13:45 who embrace evolution, even Christians,
13:48 even Christian teachers and preachers.
13:50 Even Christian academics. Yep
13:53 Who claim to believe the Bible.
13:55 The Pope came out and said that evolution and at least how he
13:59 interpreted the Word of God, were not mutually exclusive.
14:04 How is that? If we believe the Bible
14:06 is the Word of God, then we need to carefully
14:09 look at what it says. And I find that a lot of
14:13 Christians, including Academics, who say:
14:15 'You know, the age of the earth doesn't matter, or you know,
14:18 you can even accept that God evolved the body of Adam
14:22 from an ape, and then he breathed into that
14:25 and that became Adam.' What is really disturbing to me,
14:29 John, is that as I read their writings, I don't see
14:33 them carefully handling the actual Biblical text
14:36 on the key verses. So it's easy to wave my hands
14:42 and say there's no conflict between this view and the Bible
14:45 if I don't look carefully at the text.
14:48 Is it possible to bring together the teachings
14:52 of creation and evolution? Not if you're really paying
14:57 attention to what the evolutionists say
14:59 and what the Bible says. Back with more in a moment.
15:03 [Music] Every Word is a one-minute
15:05 Bible-based daily devotional presented by
15:08 Pastor John Bradshaw and designed especially
15:10 for busy people like you. Look for Every Word on selected
15:14 networks or watch it on-line everyday on our website,
15:17 itiswritten.com. In 2 Corinthians 11:3
15:29 Paul shared a serious warning with the church in Corinth.
15:33 Notice what he said, "But I fear, lest somehow,
15:36 as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds@
15:39 may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."
15:42 Eve was 'deceived', and the result of that deception
15:45 was that the world was plunged into misery and sin.
15:48 How could she NOT been deceived? Well, God had said to her,
15:52 "Don't eat the fruit of that tree."
15:55 Satan says, "Go ahead and eat this fruit."
15:57 At that moment she had a choice: Who would she believe?
16:00 Would she trust God's word and yield to that?
16:03 She didn't, and sin was the result.
16:06 You and I will avoid a whole lot of anguish if we'll do what
16:09 Eve didn't - if we'll choose to follow God's word instead
16:12 of that of the tempter. Put God's word first when
16:15 temptation comes today. Let's live today by Every Word.
16:20 Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written,
16:23 where we're looking today at creation and evolution.
16:25 I spoke with Dr Terry Mortenson at the Creation Museum
16:28 in Petersburg, Kentucky, and I asked him if it's possible
16:32 to bring together the teachings of creation and evolution.
16:38 Not if you're really paying attention to what
16:41 the evolutionists say and what the Bible says.
16:44 There's another very common argument in favor of evolution
16:48 and against Biblical creation that I want to ask you about.
16:53 That's carbon dating. Carbon dating ...
16:56 there are various dating methods using radioactive isotopes.
17:01 Carbon 14 is one, but carbon dating is never
17:04 used to date rocks. It's used to date former
17:07 living things where there's carbon in them,
17:10 so the maximum age you could date something with carbon 14
17:12 is about 80 thousand years. So, they use other methods.
17:17 They look at.... OK, well, how many uranium atoms
17:19 and how many lead atoms are there in the rock?
17:22 We have observed for 100 years that uranium decays into lead
17:26 at this X rate. They assume that it has always
17:31 decayed at that rate but the half-life for uranium to lead is
17:35 4.5 billion years. So, they didn't observe it
17:38 all that time. They've only observed it for
17:40 100 years and then they have extrapolated on the basis of the
17:44 assumption of a constant rate. Well, is that not
17:47 a fair assumption? It could be except that we
17:51 have creation scientists who have done a lot of research
17:54 on this area. They start with the eyewitness
17:56 of the Creator who says that the creation is only
18:00 a few thousand years old and there was a global flood
18:04 and then they go out and they look at the rocks.
18:07 They've taken rock samples and they look for things.
18:10 They ask questions about the rocks.
18:13 They probe in certain areas because they are starting with
18:16 that eyewitness and they found a lot of good evidence that
18:19 the decay rates have not been constant in the past,
18:23 that there were orders of magnitude faster
18:25 and if that were the case, that would shrink those millions of
18:28 years dates to thousands. Dramatically.
18:31 They used Carbon 14 to date coal.
18:33 These are dated anywhere from, I think, about 35 million
18:36 to 245 million years old, and they dated them with
18:40 carbon 14 and the dates they got back for all
18:47 of the ten samples at different levels and supposedly
18:50 different ages was all about the same.
18:54 I think it was about 58 thousand years.
18:57 Now, the creationists don't believe that's the real age of
19:00 the coal because they were using still the same naturalistic
19:04 assumptions that the evolutionists were using.
19:07 They believe that the flood would have a huge impact
19:10 on carbon dating. They also dated some diamonds.
19:14 The rock layer that enclosed the diamonds was something like
19:17 2 billion years old. They dated the diamonds, and the
19:21 dates for the diamonds with carbon 14 was only several
19:27 tens of thousands of years. So even though that's still
19:29 older than a young earth, it's radically different from the
19:32 assumption that one would ... And it's saying: How do you
19:36 get a diamond completely enclosed in a rock that is 2
19:39 million years old and the diamond is only
19:41 50,000 years old. There's something wrong here.
19:44 They've dated rock layers in the Grand Canyon.
19:47 There are lava flows over the top edge of the north rim
19:51 and the south rim that are dated by some methods to be older
19:55 than lava deposits down at the bottom of the canyon that
19:59 are supposedly at least 300 million years older than
20:03 the lava flows at the top. So what do we deduce from this
20:07 about carbon dating? These dating methods are not
20:09 telling us the true age of the rocks.
20:12 They are giving us erroneous dates because of several
20:17 key assumptions that the evolutionists use
20:21 to interpret what they see. So, they take their sample
20:25 and they get uranium and lead atoms.
20:27 That doesn't tell them the age. They have to plot this on
20:30 a chart and then they have to interpret what they are
20:34 looking at so that the uranium and the lead doesn't tell you
20:37 the age of the rock by itself. It has to be interpreted
20:40 and the interpretation is very much influenced by
20:44 the assumptions about the past. The flood.
20:48 Yep. The flood in Noah's day.
20:50 The Bible talks about it. It's very clear.
20:52 For a Creationist, the flood answers a lot of questions.
20:57 Give me some reasons quickly why we can believe that
20:59 there was a flood. Okay, well, let me start with
21:01 the Biblical because there are a lot of Christians who have
21:05 accepted the millions of years who believe that Noah's flood
21:08 was just an extensive but localized flood in
21:12 the Middle East but the Biblical text
21:14 from Genesis 6-8 is clearly describing a global flood.
21:18 If the flood was just in the Middle East,
21:20 no need to build an ark because the animals and
21:22 the birds outside the flood zone don't care and they could
21:25 repopulate the whole area if all the creatures died.
21:28 And God could have just told Noah to go on a vacation
21:32 to Europe. No need to build this huge boat.
21:36 So the purpose of the ark ... the fact that the Bible says
21:40 "all of the high mountains under the heavens are covered"
21:43 and since water seeks a level plain,
21:45 the only way you are going to cover the high mountains
21:47 is a global flood. Now, the Bible doesn't say that
21:52 the Himalayas were in existence before the flood.
21:55 The Himalayas are actually the result of the flood
21:58 and the mountain ranges, the major mountain ranges,
22:02 are all geologically recent. They are made of sedimentary
22:05 rocks that were once flat and were thrust up
22:09 so we don't have to assume that you had to have 29,000 feet
22:14 of water added to the ocean. So, there is a number
22:17 of factors. In Genesis it says that all
22:21 creatures in whose nostrils is the breath of life perished.
22:25 And then there's the rainbow promise in Genesis 9 that never
22:28 again would God flood the world with a global flood.
22:32 So biblically speaking, there is no way around the flood.
22:34 No. It was global
22:36 and it was catastrophic. and it's fundamental
22:38 to the Bible. Absolutely.
22:40 Geologically, we see massive layers,
22:43 massive that they can trap, for example, in India,
22:48 there's a massive lava flow, on a scale that we don't see today
22:52 and there are other places where just huge flows of lava that
22:57 changed into solid rock. That fits with the Bible.
23:04 The Bible says that the fountains of the great deep
23:06 burst open and that language we can study how those words
23:10 are used in the Bible and it's clearly speaking of
23:12 tectonic breaking of the crust of the earth.
23:15 We see sedimentary layers that are continent wide
23:20 or nearly so that are just massively extensive.
23:24 These are not the sediments of a river delta.
23:28 They're just too extensive. We see evidence of sea creatures
23:32 buried in these sediments. We see mass graveyards where
23:36 there are millions of creatures buried together in high
23:40 concentrations with all kinds of creatures buried together.
23:44 In many, we see land animals and sea creatures
23:47 buried together. They are not living I mean,
23:51 they are not buried where they lived.
23:53 They aren't even buried where they died.
23:55 They are buried where they are buried and as
23:57 we mentioned earlier, we see cross-bedding
24:00 which indicates turbulent flow of water.
24:03 The very fact that we find fossils speaks of a global flood
24:07 because if you have a creature die like around here,
24:10 we hunt deer all year round. I tell people most of the year
24:14 our people hunt with their car ...
24:16 laughter ... and they slam into a deer.
24:19 If you leave the deer on the side of the road
24:21 and the highway department doesn't come to pick it up,
24:23 scavengers and micro decay organisms will erase
24:26 the evidence. So to make a fossil, you have
24:29 to bury that creature fast and we see evidence of creatures
24:33 being buried alive. There are creatures with other
24:36 creatures fossilized in their stomachs so they didn't even get
24:40 to finish digesting lunch. There are fossilized worms.
24:44 There are fossilized animal manure.
24:46 You know, a cow pie doesn't lay on the field for years
24:51 in pristine condition. So there's folding in the rocks
24:56 and this speaks of catastrophic processes on a global scale.
25:04 It's interesting Christians, very often people who believe
25:09 in Creation are dismissed as not thinking.
25:12 But it seems to me that if you really think about how we got
25:15 here, Creation, a flood, divine intervention is the only
25:21 suitable, satisfactory explanation for the world
25:25 we see around us. The more I read, the more
25:27 I study, the more persuaded I am of the truth of the Bible.
25:33 Dr. Mortenson, thank you. Thanks for taking the time
25:37 to talk with us. Good to be with you, John.
25:39 Thank you.
25:45 Today, I'd like to send you a booklet that demonstrates how
25:47 God foretold world events with absolute accuracy thousands
25:51 of years in advance. This booklet is called,
25:54 "Can God be Trusted?" and it's absolutely FREE.
25:57 Just call 1 (800) 253-3000
26:00 and ask for "Can God be Trusted."
26:03 If the line's busy, please keep on trying.
26:06 Or write to It Is Written, P.O. Box 6,
26:10 Chattanooga, TN 37401, and we'll mail a free copy to
26:15 your address in North America. It Is Written is a
26:18 faith-based ministry supported by viewers like you.
26:21 Your help makes it possible for us to share God's good news
26:24 with the world. Your tax-deductible gift can be
26:27 sent to the address on your screen,
26:30 or you can support us online at ItIsWritten.com.
26:33 Thank you for your continued prayerful support.
26:35 Our toll-free number is 1 (800) 253-3000,
26:39 and our web address is ItIsWritten.com.
26:44 Creation and evolution. The Word of God points us
26:48 to a God who is the God of creation.
26:51 Together, let's pray to that God right now.
26:54 Would you pray with me? Our Father in heaven,
26:56 I thank you the Bible states with great confidence that
26:59 in the beginning, God created. And I'm grateful that you are
27:04 not only the Creator, but the Re-Creator.
27:09 David prayed, "Create in me a clean heart,
27:11 oh, God, and renew a right spirit within me,"
27:14 and I pray now that you would be our Creator and
27:17 Re-Creator and create in me, in each of us, that right spirit
27:25 that you want us to have. Bless and keep us, Lord,
27:28 and be in our lives the God of creation and Re-creation.
27:32 And I thank you today in Jesus' name, Amen.
27:45 [Music] Thank you for joining me today.
27:54 I look forward to seeing you again next time.
27:56 Until then, remember: It written:
28:00 Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word
28:04 that proceeds from the mouth of God.


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