We have had a brilliant weekend at the little fellowship we attend in southeast England. Aussie geologist John Mackay did a teaching weekend, presenting much information about creation (in six days, just as the Bible says), Noah's Flood (the evidence is all over the earth!) and why we do not have to fear CO2 (carbon dioxide - it's good, plants eat it, and there used to be a whole lot more of it).
John is still on tour in England and is debating at Southampton University on Tuesday (Sept 11, 2011) evening on the truth of Genesis. For John's itinerary click on
http://www.amen.org.uk/cr/where/
One of his charts showed a basic difference between evolution and creation. Evolution theory says everything is on an upward climb, with apes evolving into men, and everything evolving upwards into better, healthier, stronger and higher forms. In the creation account God made everything perfect in the first place, but since Adam and Eve sinned, we have been going steadily downhill. The first people were bigger, stronger, had bigger brains, were smarter than we are, and lived a whole lot longer than we do. We have been degenerating, particularly since Noah's Flood.
John pointed out that in Genesis 1:31 at the end of the sixth day: 'God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.' The earth was not full of violent creatures killing and eating each other. He pointed out that people, animals, and birds were all vegetarian. (Genesis 1:29-30) So even lions and dinosaurs were veggies!
But what about the sharp teeth of carnivores being designed for killing? John said once he was on a blueberry farm and the owner said: 'Oh, those cats are raiding the blueberries again!' The cats used their teeth as a rake to strip berries off the berries and eat them. The berries were caught in the spaces between the teeth. Cats and lions and tigers etc were designed to be veggies! And of course the Bible tells us that in the Millennium reign of Christ, they will once again be herbivores, and the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The story of the blueberry farm reminded me of how I strip redcurrants off their stems - just run them through a fork. So the teeth and claws of animals which are now carnivorous are perfectly designed for stripping and eating vegetarian food!
John commented on the huge size of many fossilized creatures, like spiders as big as windows, huge mosquitoes, lizards 23 feet long, cockroaches 30 times bigger, rats weighing one ton etc. Even the single celled creatures were huge and John mentioned a fossilized amoeba 18 inches in diameter! You would not need a microscope to see it.
Some things they don't tell us on the nature programs:
Sea levels have gone up and down many times. John showed a slide of a cliff by a beach, with a thick layer of shells, now high above the present beach, but showing where the old beach once was.
There are fossil pine trees with no tree rings, because the weather was so good before the Flood. Tree rings show stress.
Reptile sex is determined by the temperature of the eggs, and cooler temperatures lead to more males and fewer females. This may have played a role in the demise of the dinosaurs.
Mosquitoes are plant eaters, not created to be blood suckers - they drill into the veins of a leaf to suck plant nectar. But just once in the life of a female mozzie she needs iron rich protein. Plants no longer contain enough, because they have degenerated to much, so she searches out the haemoglobin she can smell on people.
Everything was bigger before the Flood - gingko biloba tree in Canada has fossil leaves two feet across; huge tassel fern trees now only grow to 18 inches.
CO2, carbon dioxide, is what plants eat. There was lots more before the Flood, so plants were much bigger and healthier, and much more nourishing for the animals. So there was abundant plant food, full of nutrients from ground, which was not depleted.
CO2 may be increasing, and if it is, it will BENEFIT life.
The worm that David Attenborough mentions which causes blindness was not created for this; when it reaches the eyeball, the worm dies.
Humans have a growth blocker gene, but some creatures like sharks, snakes, turtles and kangaroos keep growing all their lives and lived longer lives before the Flood. He cited one fossil of a 2,500 lb. snake the length of 1 and 1/2 buses and mentioned a 45 ft long shark. How big would a 500 year old dinosaur be? Or a 1,000 year old turtle?
Lions and tigers can digest grass, fruit and vegetables. John said his dog loves to tear a mango apart to get at the tough seed and work at it with his sharp teeth. Cats eat grass to clean out their intestines. (I also remember reading that lions were feed hay etc in the zoos of England during the war when meat was in short supply.)
John urged us to do as 1 Thes 5:21 says: 'Prove all things.' He said: 'Christianity is a faith that is fact based.'
He has won debates with theistic evolutionists who claim to be Christian, yet deny the literal nature of Genesis Chapters 1-11.
John Mackay accepted Jesus as his Lord when he was a teenager. He said atheists led him to Christ. As a student he read in a biology book that there was no God and the Bible was silly. This got his hackles up - he knew that you could not prove a negative, and he wondered why a science textbook would have mentioned the Bible if it was so silly. So he set out to read it and find the truth, and when he found it in the Bible, he accepted Jesus as his Savior. Will you?
So....time to get clued up, folks! God expects us to believe Him when He says something in His holy Word, the Bible. Genesis 1-11 is all true. The big dip started when Adam and Eve sinned and it is still going on. Sin and death entered the world and the wages of sin is still death.
Fortunately God in His inexplicable mercy has made a way for us to escape the horror of death and eternal punishment. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins. Why did Jesus have to die? Because sin is so horrible and so offensive that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. The blood of animals was not good enough as a sacrifice for sin. Jesus' perfect blood cleanses us from sin and has purchased forgiveness and eternal life for those who believe in Him and accept Him as Lord.
Here is a good prayer: 'Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. I can't do anything to change the bad things I said and did and thought. Please forgive me. Please wash me clean by the power of Your shed blood. Please let me be one of Your people.'
Please check out John's Creation Research website. He has dug up dinosaur and other fossils and is organizing a dig in Australia next year if anyone is interested in some field work. This man is on the cutting edge of gospel truth, out there debating with atheists, speaking in universities, contending for the faith. He needs our support in any way we can help him. So if you can buy some books or DVDs or sign up to give a bit of money each month, we recommend this man and his ministry.
Most of us can't do what he is doing, but we can at least help him. Can your church or organization invite him to speak? Or give a bit to help him each month? In case you had not noticed, there is a battle going on for the minds of our children. God and the Bible are being attacked and banned from our schools. The truth is kept out of the media. When you stand before Jesus, will you be able to show anything you did to stop all this?
And then there is prayer! Can you put John and his team on your prayer list? Here is a good prayer I hope lots of you will say: 'Dear Father, please extra bless John Mackay and his team and please multiply their work and send it out like a tsunami so that more people know the truth and are swept into Your wonderful kingdom.'
Click this link to get to John's Creation Research website:
http://www.creationresearch.net/
