Participants: John Bradshaw
Series Code: IIW
Program Code: IIW001257
00:07 It has stood the test of time, God's book, the Bible.
00:17 Still relevant in today's complex world. 00:22 It Is Written ... 00:25 sharing hope around the globe. 00:36 Thanks for joining me today. 00:37 I'm John Bradshaw and this is It Is Written. 00:42 [Music] On February 12 in the year 180 two men were born 00:46 on either side of the Atlantic Ocean who would go 00:49 on to profoundly affect the world. 00:52 In Kentucky on that day was born the man who would go on 00:55 to become the 16th President of the United States of 00:58 America - Abraham Lincoln - the man who would sign the 01:01 emancipation proclamation and lead the nation through the 01:04 turmoil of the Civil War. 01:06 And on that very same day, in Shewsbury, England, Charles 01:11 Darwin entered the world. 01:13 Now although he was far from the first person to propose 01:16 the idea of evolution, Darwin went on to become known as 01:19 the Father of Evolution. 01:21 He came to view what he saw in the natural world as being 01:26 explainable by natural processes, and in 1859 he 01:30 published the book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of 01:36 Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured 01:40 Races In the Struggle for Life". 01:43 It was a book that shook the world. 01:46 Prior to Darwin, the western world was "largely" a 01:51 creationist world. 01:53 But today, things are very different. 01:57 Gallup polls reveal that while nearly half of 02:00 Americans believe in creationism, 32% believe in 02:04 evolution guided by God, and 15% believe in atheistic 02:10 evolution. 02:11 TV scientist Bill Nye - to quote CNN - "slammed 02:15 creationism", saying that if people ignored evolutionary 02:20 theory their worldview became "crazy", and he urged adults 02:25 not to teach the Biblical teaching of creation to their 02:29 children. 02:30 So, what can a person safely believe? 02:32 The Bible begins with the words "In the beginning God 02:36 created the heaven and the earth." 02:38 But a lot of people don't agree. 02:41 I recently traveled to Petersburg in Northern 02:43 Kentucky, near Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit the Creation 02:46 Museum, and I spoke with scientist Dr Terry Mortenson 02:51 about creation and evolution. 02:54 I began by asking Dr Mortenson where the idea came 02:57 from that the Earth is millions of years old. 03:00 TM: The idea of millions of years did not come from the 03:05 rocks and the fossils. 03:06 It came from certain assumptions that were used to 03:09 interpret the rocks and the fossils and those assumptions 03:12 came out of antibiblical world views, Deism, Atheism, 03:17 where people rejected the Biblical view of history. 03:20 In contrast, for the first 1800 years of church history 03:24 and for 1400 years before that among the Jews, they 03:28 took the Bible as the revelation of the Creator, 03:32 the early chapters of Genesis as true history, and so the 03:37 date of 6000 years roughly comes from the chronological 03:42 information given in Genesis. 03:43 JB You said that we didn't get from Creationism to 03:47 Evolution because somebody made a startling scientific 03:50 discovery. 03:51 How did we get here? 03:52 TM: many people coming out of the enlightenment rejected 03:56 the Bible and they began to say: We need to explain 04:00 everything 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 04:11 that there's no way that a global flood could produce 04:15 what we are looking. 04:16 I mean these rock layers are very thick. 04:19 It must have taken millions of years to deposit those. 04:22 Well, they were making an assumption: 1) that they knew 04:25 what a global flood could do. 04:27 They were just assuming. 04:28 They had not done scientific experiments to say you know, 04:32 you can't produce this particular kind of geological 04:35 formation in a catastrophic flood. 04:38 JB So what's science, or good science or responsible 04:40 science? 04:41 TM Well, the word "science" in English comes from the 04:44 Latin word for science, and originally it just meant 04:48 knowledge. 04:49 And so before the modern scientific age, theology was 04:53 a science. 04:54 In fact, it was called the queen of science, the queen 04:59 of knowledge. 05:00 But in the wake of the enlightenment and the 05:05 development of modern science, science became 05:07 associated with repeatable experiments and the 05:10 development of technology and so we started to build steam 05:14 engines, and railroads and electricity and those kinds 05:19 of things and what happened in the 18th and 19th Century 05:23 was what we can call the science of geology began to 05:30 develop and it was a different kind of science, 05:33 because it wasn't reproducing things in the lab, it was 05:37 looking at things out there in the world and trying to 05:39 reconstruct the unobserved past. 05:42 and so, for example, just a concrete example, John Wesley 05:45 Powell was the first geologist to go into the 05:49 Grand Canyon back in the 1860's. 05:52 Well, he went into the canyon already an evolutionist and 05:55 believing in millions of years. 05:58 He believed that the rocks were the result of slow, 06:01 gradual deposition over long, long periods of time. 06:04 So when he went into the Grand Canyon and saw these 06:08 massive layers and he saw the muddy Colorado River going 06:12 through this huge canyon, he just began to immediately 06:16 think: "Well, slow, gradual deposition laid down these 06:19 layers, and the Colorado River has just been flowing 06:22 for millions of years to carve this canyon. 06:26 [Music] JB So why should people believe Creation from 06:29 a scientific point of view? 06:31 TM ... 06:32 is there evidence in the rocks that point to this 06:37 global flood? 06:38 I'll have more in just a moment. 06:53 [Music] In Matthew 4:4, the Word of God says, "It is 06:56 written: Man shall not live by bread alone but by every 07:00 word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 07:02 Every Word is a one-minute Bible-based daily devotional 07:06 presented by Pastor John Bradshaw and designed 07:09 especially for busy people like you. 07:12 Look for Every Word on selected networks or watch it 07:17 on-line everyday on our website, itiswritten.com. 07:20 Receive a daily spiritual boost. 07:23 Watch Every Word. 07:24 You'll be glad you did. 07:27 This is It Is Written, I'm John Bradshaw, and today 07:30 we're discussion creation and evolution with Dr Terry 07:33 Mortenson from the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky. 07:37 I think we both know that it's common for people today 07:39 to view the world as being millions and millions of 07:42 years old, and to look at the Grand Canyon as something 07:44 that was produced over long ages of time. 07:47 I asked Dr Mortenson how in view of the science that he 07:55 can go to the Grand Canyon and see an altogether 07:58 different picture. 07:59 TM Well, it's because I'm going in with an eye witness 08:03 testimony. 08:04 And so when an evolutionist goes into the Grand Canyon, 08:07 it's not even a question on the radar, could a global 08:12 flood be responsible for what I'm looking at? 08:15 Whereas when I go in that eye witness testimony of the 08:18 Creator given to us in the Book of Genesis is in the 08:23 mind and we're looking ... 08:28 is there evidence in the rocks that point to this 08:30 global flood? 08:31 JB Give me a scientific explanation for the Grand 08:36 Canyon. 08:37 TM Well, there's a number of things that we show people 08:40 when we go into the canyon. 08:42 One is a feature that's called "Cross-bedding." 08:45 you have very strong evidence that that very thick layer 08:49 was laid down under an enormous amount of water, 08:53 moving at a good speed. 08:55 There is another feature that we show them. 08:57 They're called Nautiloids. 08:59 They are fossils that are like an ice cream cone, a 09:04 pointed ice cream cone. 09:06 And they're related to squid. 09:09 They have a head sticking out of the cone, and there's 09:14 about a 7 foot thick layer in the red wall limestone that 09:20 is about 400 feet thick that is just filled with these, 09:24 and they've been spotted in different places, all the way 09:28 through this layer, all the way up near Las Vegas. 09:32 There's an estimated billion or so of these creatures 09:36 buried in this one thin layer and Steve Austin, a Ph.D. 09:41 geologist did some research on them and he took a compass 09:45 and a GPS and he plotted where he found them all along 09:50 this layer in the Grand Canyon. 09:53 He noted their orientation. 09:55 I think 15% of them are buried in an upright position 09:58 with their point down. 10:01 He noted that they are not all just higally pigally in 10:04 all directions, but there's a general indication ... 10:08 I can't remember if it indicates a flow from the 10:11 Southwest to the Northeast or Southeast to the Northwest, 10:14 but what he argues in a paper which he presented to the 10:20 National Park Service, and they were very interested, 10:23 the geologists, was that this was a massive catastrophic 10:28 event, mass burial of these creatures, and that helps to 10:35 explain the orientation and that these cones are in an 10:41 upright position, because you wouldn't expect the creature 10:43 to just die a natural death and go down and sink into the 10:46 ocean floor and just stand there perfectly upright for 10:50 hundreds or thousands of years waiting to slowly get 10:52 settled. 10:54 Another feature that we show a couple of places is the 10:57 folding of rock. 10:59 Now you can bend solid rock under high temperature and 11:02 pressure but when you do, you metamorphose or you change 11:07 the structure of the rock but in these examples that we 11:10 show, the rock stays exactly the same character all the 11:14 way through the bend. 11:15 JB Many people have seen this on the sides of roads, that 11:17 type of figure, where you get layers that fold and this is 11:19 what you're talking about, right? 11:21 TM Right JB OK And so what do you see when you look at 11:28 these legs? 11:29 TM Well, what that shows ... 11:30 JB Doesn't it show ... 11:31 taking the Evolutionist viewpoint, doesn't it show, 11:33 well, this one laid down over 150 million years, and then 11:37 the next one came, because this is what modern science 11:39 typically teaches, correct? 11:40 TM Yes. 11:42 JB That they laid down over millions of years. 11:43 TM But it wouldn't lay down the layers so that it all 11:46 flowed the same way and if the rock layer is being 11:53 deposited slowly, and then you had an earthquake, which 11:57 is what would cause the movement ... 11:59 JB Right TM ... 12:00 it would break the rock or if there was enough stuff above, 12:05 it would, with the heat and the pressure, would allow it 12:08 to bend, but it would transform the character of 12:10 the rock in the bend, and what we see doesn't fit that 12:15 at all. 12:16 What it fits is the conclusion that those rock 12:19 layers were bent when they were still relatively soft 12:23 and moist, shortly after they were deposited, and then the 12:27 northeast end of the Grand Canyon you have the Kaibab up 12:30 where the whole pile of sediments, which the 12:34 evolutionists say represents 300 million years of time, 12:37 the whole pile is bent the same direction, which 12:41 indicates strongly to creation geologists that the 12:43 whole pile was still relatively wet and moist and 12:47 soft. 12:48 JB See, you've got me convinced. 12:52 And as I listen to you, I say to myself: Why doesn't 12:55 everybody believe this? 12:57 TM Well, I come back to the Bible, because that informs 12:59 my understanding of the World and the Bible says that all 13:02 of us are sinners. 13:05 We're in rebellion against our Creator and Paul says in 13:10 the book of Romans, Chapter 1 and 2, he says that the whole 13:14 Creation bears witness to the existence and at least some 13:17 of the attributes are characteristics of God and in 13:21 Chapter 2, he says that God has written his moral law in 13:24 the heart of every person. 13:25 Our conscience tells us we either did that right or we 13:28 did it wrong and what Paul says in Romans 1 is that 13:32 people, we all do this to a greater or lesser extent. 13:36 We push down the truth. 13:37 We suppress that truth because we don't want to deal 13:42 with God. 13:43 We don't want to deal with our sin. 13:47 You know, there's a lot of discussion today about 13:49 Intelligent Design, and people saying there's strong 13:51 evidence for a designer, and I agree with that, but it's 13:55 fairly safe to entertain the idea of a designer as long as 14:00 you don't say who the designer is. 14:02 It could be aliens in outer space. 14:04 Well, it doesn't matter. 14:05 I can live my life the way I want, but to consider a 14:10 global flood and a young earth, you're now face to 14:15 face with the reality of a God that the Bible describes 14:19 is not only loving and merciful and patient, but 14:23 Holy and just. 14:26 So if a person is not prepared to really face that 14:30 truth, they're going to suppress the truth. 14:33 They're going to find any other explanation to evade 14:38 that. 14:39 JB Which leads me to my next question. 14:41 It's not just Atheists who embrace evolution, even 14:43 Christians, even Christian teachers and preachers. 14:45 Even Christian academics. 14:46 TM Yep JB who claim to believe the Bible. 14:49 The Pope came out and said that evolution and at least 14:53 how he interpreted the Word of God, were not mutually 14:56 exclusive. 14:58 How is that? 14:59 TM If we believe the Bible is the Word of God, then we need 15:02 to carefully look at what it says. 15:05 And I find that a lot of Christians, including 15:08 Academics, who say: You know, the age of the earth doesn't 15:10 matter, or you know, you can even accept that God evolved 15:16 the body of Adam from an ape, and then he breathed into 15:19 that and that became Adam. 15:21 What is really disturbing to me, John, is that as I read 15:25 their writings, I don't see them carefully handling the 15:29 actual Biblical text on the key verses. 15:33 So it's easy to wave my hands and say there's no conflict 15:38 between this view and the Bible if I don't look 15:40 carefully at the text. 15:42 JB Is it possible to bring the teachings of creation and 15:47 evolution? 15:49 TM Not if you're really paying attention to what the 15:52 evolutionists say and what the Bible says. 15:54 Back with more in a moment. 16:08 [Music] It Is Written is dedicated to sharing the 16:10 gospel around the world. 16:12 To discover more about It is Written, I invite you to 16:14 visit our website: itiswritten.com and browse 16:17 the dozens of pages that describe what we do and how 16:20 we do it. 16:21 Let's get to know each other better. 16:24 Visit our website: itiswritten.com today. 16:28 Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written, where we're 16:30 looking today at creation and evolution. 16:33 I spoke with Dr Terry Mortenson at the Creation 16:35 Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and I asked him if 16:39 it's possible to bring together the teachings of 16:42 creation and evolution. 16:45 TM Not if you're really paying attention to what the 16:48 evolutionists say and what the Bible says. 16:51 common argument in favor of evolution and against 16:58 Biblical creation that I want to ask you about. 17:01 That's carbon dating. 17:03 TM Carbon dating ... 17:05 there are various dating methods using radioactive 17:08 isotopes. 17:09 Carbon 14 is one but carbon dating is never used to date 17:12 rocks. 17:14 It's used to date former living things where there's 17:17 carbon in them, so the maximum age you could date 17:19 something with carbon 14 is about 80 thousand years. 17:23 So, they use other methods. 17:25 They look at....OK, well, how many uranium atoms and how 17:28 many lead atoms are there in the rock? 17:31 We have observed for 100 years that uranium decays 17:36 into lead at this X rate. 17:39 They assume that it has always decayed at that rate 17:42 but the half-life for uranium to lead is 4.5 billion years. 17:45 So, they didn't observe it all that time. 17:47 They've only observed it for 100 years and then they have 17:49 extrapolated on the basis of the assumption of a constant 17:53 rate. 17:54 JB Well, is that not a fair assumption? 17:56 TM It could be except that we have creation scientists who 18:01 have done a lot of research on this area. 18:03 They start with the eyewitness of the Creator who 18:07 says that the creation is only a few thousand years old 18:11 and there was a global flood and then they go out and they 18:15 look at the rocks. 18:16 They've taken rock samples and they look for things. 18:20 They ask questions about the rocks. 18:22 They probe in certain areas because they are starting 18:26 with that eyewitness and they found a lot of good evidence 18:30 that the decay rates have not been constant in the past, 18:32 that there were orders of magnitude faster and if that 18:35 were the case, that would shrink those millions of 18:38 years dates to thousands. 18:40 JB Dramatically. 18:41 TM They used Carbon 14 to date coal. 18:44 These are dated anywhere from, I think, about 35 18:47 million to 245 million years old, and they dated them with 18:51 carbon 14 and the dates they got back for all of the ten 18:59 samples at different levels and supposedly different ages 19:03 was all about the same. 19:06 I think it was about 58 thousand years. 19:09 Now, the creationists don't believe that's the real age 19:11 of the coal because they were using still the same 19:15 naturalistic assumptions that the evolutionists were using. 19:18 They believe that the flood would have a huge impact on 19:21 carbon dating. 19:23 They also dated some diamonds. 19:25 The rock layer that enclosed the diamonds was something 19:28 like 2 billion years old. 19:29 They dated the diamonds, and the dates for the diamonds 19:35 with carbon 14 was only several tens of thousands of 19:38 years. 19:39 JB So even though that's still older than a young 19:41 earth, it's radically different from the assumption 19:44 that one would ... 19:45 TM And it's saying: How do you get a diamond completely 19:49 enclosed in a rock that is 2 million years old and the 19:51 diamond is only 50,000 years old. 19:54 There's something wrong here. 19:56 They've dated rock layers in the Grand Canyon. 19:59 Their lava flows over the top edge of the north rim and the 20:03 south rim that are dated by some methods to be older than 20:07 lava deposits down at the bottom of the canyon that are 20:12 supposedly at least 300 million years older than the 20:16 lavalows at the top. 20:18 JB So what do we deduce from this about carbon dating? 20:21 TM These dating methods are not telling us the true age 20:23 of the rocks. 20:25 They are giving us erroneous dates because of several key 20:31 assumptions that the evolutionists use to 20:35 interpret what they see. 20:37 So, they take their sample and they get uranium and lead 20:39 atoms. 20:40 That doesn't tell them the age. 20:43 They have to plot this on a chart and then they have to 20:45 interpret what they are looking at so that the 20:47 uranium and the lead doesn't tell you the age of the rock 20:50 by itself. 20:51 It has to be interpreted and the interpretation is very 20:55 much influenced by the assumptions about the past. 20:59 JB The flood. 21:01 TM Yep. 21:02 JB The flood in Noah's day. 21:03 The Bible talks about it. 21:04 It's very clear. 21:05 For a Creationist, the flood answers a lot of questions. 21:08 The Grand Canyon, the layers, we look at those as being 21:10 laid down by floods quickly. 21:11 Give me some reasons, quickly, why we can believe 21:13 that there was a flood. 21:14 TM Okay, well, let me start with the Biblical because 21:16 there are a lot of Christians who have accepted the 21:18 millions of years who believe that Noah's flood was just an 21:22 extensive but localized flood in the Middle East but the 21:26 Biblical text from Genesis 6-8 is clearly describing a 21:30 global flood. 21:31 If the flood was just in the Middle East, no need to build 21:33 an ark because the animals and the birds outside the 21:36 flood zone don't care and they could repopulate the 21:38 whole area if all the creatures died. 21:41 And God could have just told Noah to go on a vacation to 21:45 Europe. 21:46 No need to build this huge boat. 21:48 So the purpose of the ark ... 21:50 the fact that the Bible says "all of the high mountains 21:53 under the heavens are covered" and since water 21:56 seeks a level plain, the only way you are going to cover 22:00 the high mountains is a global flood. 22:03 Now, the Bible doesn't say that the Himalayas were in 22:05 existence before the flood. 22:07 The Himalayas are actually the result of the flood and 22:12 the mountain ranges, the major mountain ranges, are 22:15 al geologically recent. 22:17 They are made of sedimentary rocks that were once flat and 22:21 were thrust up so we don't have to assume that you had 22:25 to have 29,000 feet of water added to the ocean. 22:28 So, there is a number of factors. 22:32 In Genesis it says that all creatures in whose nostrils 22:37 is the breath of life perished. 22:41 And then there's the rainbow promise in Genesis 9 that 22:43 never again would God flood the world with a global 22:46 flood. 22:47 JB So biblically speaking, there is no way around the 22:49 flood. 22:50 TM No. 22:51 It was global and it was catastrophic. 22:53 JB and it's fundamental to the Bible. 22:55 TM Absolutely. 22:56 Geologically, we see massive layers, massive that they can 22:58 trap, for example, in India, there's a massive lava flow, 23:00 on a scale that we don't see today and there are other 23:08 places where just huge flows of lava that changed into 23:15 solid rock. 23:17 That fits with the Bible. 23:18 The Bible says that the fountains of the great deep 23:20 burst open and that language we can study how those words 23:24 are used in the Bible and it's clearly speaking of 23:27 tectonic breaking of the crust of the earth. 23:31 We see sedimentary layers that are continent wide or 23:35 nearly so that are just massively extensive. 23:39 These are not the sediments of a river delta. 23:42 They're just too extensive. 23:44 We see evidence of sea creatures buried in these 23:48 sediments. 23:49 We see mass graveyards where there are millions of 23:52 creatures buried together in high concentrations with all 23:54 kinds of creatures buried together. 23:56 In many, we see land animals and sea creatures buried 23:58 together. 23:59 They are not living I mean, they are not buried where 24:02 they lived. 24:07 They aren't even buried where they died. 24:09 They are buried where they are buried and as we 24:12 mentioned earlier, we see cross-bedding which indicates 24:16 turbulent flow of water. 24:18 The very fact that we find fossils speaks of a global 24:22 flood because if you have a creature die like around 24:25 here, we hunt deer all year round. 24:28 I tell people most of the year our people hunt with 24:30 their car ... 24:33 laughter ... 24:34 and they slam into a deer. 24:35 If you leave the deer on the side of the road and the 24:37 highway department doesn't come to pick it up, 24:39 scavengers and micro decay organisms will erase the 24:42 evidence. 24:43 So to make a fossil, you have to bury that creature fast 24:46 and we see evidence of creatures being buried alive. 24:50 There are creatures with other creatures fossilized in 24:52 their stomachs so they didn't even get to finish digesting 24:56 lunch. 24:57 There are fossilized worms. 24:59 There are fossilized animal manure. 25:02 You know, a cow pie doesn't lay on the field for years in 25:07 pristine condition. 25:08 So there's folding in the rocks and this speaks of 25:15 catastrophic processes on a global scale. 25:19 JB It's interesting Christians, very often people 25:24 who believe in Creation are dismissed as not thinking. 25:27 But it seems to me that if you really think about how we 25:31 got here, Creation, a flood, divine intervention is the 25:36 only suitable, satisfactory explanation for the world we 25:41 see around us. 25:42 TM The more I read, the more I study, the more persuaded I 25:46 am of the truth of the Bible. 25:49 JB Dr. Mortenson, thank you. 25:50 Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. 25:53 TM Good to be with you, John. 25:56 JB Thank you. 25:57 Creation or evolution? 25:58 I'd like to offer you a free book that makes this subject 26:02 clear. 26:03 It's called "Out of Thin Air", produced by It Is 26:06 Written, and written by former ministry speaker Shawn 26:09 Boonstra. 26:10 It's an excellent resource that makes the subject of 26:13 creation and evolution very, very clear. 26:17 Get your free copy of "Out of Thin Air" by calling right 26:20 now, 1-800-253-3000. 26:21 Ask for: Out of Thin Air. 26:24 Or you can write to It Is Written, Box O, Thousand 26:27 Oaks, CA 91359, and we will mail a copy to your address 26:32 in North America. 26:33 And remember: It Is Written is a faith-based ministry 26:37 made possible by viewers like you. 26:40 Thank you for your support. 26:43 Creation and evolution. 26:45 The Word of God points us to a God who is the God of 26:48 creation. 26:50 Together, let's pray to that God right now. 26:52 Would you pray with me? 26:54 Our Father in heaven, I thank you the Bible states with 26:57 great confidence that in the beginning, God created. 27:01 And I'm grateful that you are not only the Creator, but the 27:06 Re-Creator. 27:07 David prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, oh, God, and 27:11 renew a right spirit within me," and I pray now that you 27:16 would be our Creator and Re-Creator and create in me, 27:21 in each of us, that right spirit that you want us to 27:25 have. 27:26 Bless and keep us, Lord, and be in our lives the God of 27:29 creation and Re-creation. 27:31 And I thank you today in Jesus' name, Amen. 27:52 [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: Man shallot live 27:59 by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the 28:04 mouth of God. |
Revised 2015-02-06