Participants: John Bradshaw (Host), Mortensen
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. |
Revised 2016-04-25