on Facebook so welcome if you're watching tonight my name is Simon Turpin and I'm the executive director of Answers in Genesis in the UK and we're just a few minutes short of 7:30 so I'm just going to give a few announcements before we start just a reminder if you're interested in the AIG resources that we have 20% off our resources at the minute all you have to do is go to the Answers in Genesis website Answers in Genesis org and when you go to the store just remember to put a special code in Matthew 6 and you'll get 20% of all your resources and so though please do check that out in fact our speaker tonight is going to mention the number of resources helpful resources about tonight's topic at the end of his talk and with that I'm going to introduce our special guest speaker tonight because it's a pleasure to have with us dr. Terry Mortensen now Terry is going to be speaking as you can see on the screen on the subject of millions of years the ideas unscientific origin and catastrophic consequences if you haven't heard this talk before it is an amazing talk it'll open your eyes to why this issue is important but where these ideas came from and how they've infiltrated the church but let me quickly introduce Terry Terry has an ENDIF from Trinity evangelical school there in the States and he has a PhD in the history of geology from Coventry University here in the UK so that's not actually too far from us and Terry as well as serving for Answers in Genesis he served previously for Campus Crusade for Christ for 26 years mainly serving in Eastern Europe so Terry and welcome this evening well thank you it's it's great to be with you and having lived in the UK for 10 years it's it's great to be back there sort of through the internet oh yeah go ahead now yes good good to have you with us so I don't want to waste people's time I just I'll hand her over to you you can give any introductions you want to give and then you know blesses with this amazing talk okay okay well it's uh it's a joy to be able to talk to you tonight about this subject of millions of years I've had the privilege of speaking on this subject and the whole creation evolution issue in almost 30 countries now and I found that everywhere I go most Christians think it's no big deal you can accept the millions of years it doesn't really matter and they don't have any idea where the idea came from in fact most of our evangelical theologians today think that the age of the earth doesn't matter so I hope that you will stay with me here for the next hour or a little bit more maybe and look at this very important question now if you if you go to a textbook on geology or maybe a museum in other places you'll often see a display like this that it's shows the history of life according to what secular geologists say that life evolved from very simple bottom-dwelling sea creatures which themselves had evolved from microscopic bacteria and they say that from the first living cell up to the present is about three and a half billion years that's just an incomprehensible amount of time that's not what people have always thought that's really really a relatively new idea the idea of millions of years developed in the early nineteenth century and then it gradually expanded until we got to the billions for the age of the earth by about 1940 so where did that idea come from and to answer that question we need to first consider two very important passages of Scripture that are relevant to this question the first one is in second Corinthians chapter 10 and it says for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses we're destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ so the Apostle Paul says to the Christians in the first century were involved in a war it's not a war of arrows and Spears and and catapults it's a war of ideas he calls them speculations that King James translates the same Greek word imaginations and he says these are high and lofty ideas that are raised up against the knowledge of God and therefore they're raised up against God's Word and he says we as Christians need to pull down those speculations and we need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ in Colossians chapter 2 Paul says this see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty decision of men according to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ Paul says be careful there ideas out there they're called the philosophies and traditions of men and they're deceptive they're the elementary principles of the world they're the the starting assumptions the worldview assumptions of the world and they are contrary to Christ now this isn't the only verse in the Bible that warns Christians about deception there are many verses and you can be I can be deceived if you find somebody who says well I can't be deceived we're just already because any of us can be deceived if we're only given certain information about a particular topic and we're not allowed to hear other con to reviews we can be deceived and Paul says we can be deceived and we need to guard against it by building our thinking according to Christ which means to build it according to the Word of God so what I want to show you hopefully convince you of is that over the last 200 years most of the church has been taken captive by empty philosophy and the traditions of men and speculations and imaginations raised up against the knowledge of God well to understand this issue of the age of the earth and creation and evolution we need to understand that there are two broad categories of science I like to call them operation science and origin science operation science is what we normally think of when we think of science it's what people do wearing white lab coats and they use the so-called scientific method which I would define this way the use of observable repeatable experiments in a controlled environment it's usually in a laboratory to understand how things operate or function in the present physical universe in order to find cures for disease produce new technology or put a man on the moon so it's the use of observable experiments repeatable experiments to find out how things operate or function in the present so that we can manipulate them for our good so operation science is also called experimental science where origin science and most of biology chemistry physics engineering research medical research those are all forms of operation observable experimental science they are looking at things in the present to see if they can control or manipulate those things to cure disease or otherwise improve our lives but that kind of science won't answer the question how did the Grand Canyon form you can't recreate the Grand Canyon in the laboratory it's there though rock layers are there that huge erosional feature is there but you want to know what happened in the unobservable unrepeatable past to produce what you're looking at in the present that's a historical question operation experimental observational science won't answer the question how did those creatures come into existence now the question is not how do you get a dog from a previous dog that's observational science we can watch mommy dog and daddy dog get together and then mommy dog gets bigger and a few weeks later baby dogs come out of mommy dog and we can repeat that experiment or that observation over and over but the question we we have is how did the first dog come into existence how did the first elephant the first horse come into existence you can't recreate that in the laboratory that's a historical event in the unobservable unrepeatable past operation science origin science excuse me operation science experimental observational science won't answer the question how did Saturn come into existence it's there we can study it and see what it's doing in the present but the question is how did it come into existence in the unrepeatable unobservable past and so forth at those kinds of historical questions we need origin science and it uses what I call the legal historical method which can be defined this way the use of reliable eyewitness testimony if any is available and observable evidence to determine the past unobservable unrepeatable event or events which produce the observable evidence we see in the present so two sources of information to answer the historical question do we have any eyewitness testimony if somebody who was there who saw this happen in the past and then we have the evidence in the present that we can study to look for clues to try to reconstruct the unobservable unrepeatable past and so origin science is so-called historical science and historical geology paleontology that studies fossils archeology cosmology studying the origin of the of the cosmos and criminal investigation they're all forms of historical or origin science they are looking at things in the present and trying to reconstruct the past history the question of operation science and origin science the difference between them can be illustrated this way a car mechanic is an operation scientist he knows how the car operates he knows how the Pistons go up and down he knows how the air-conditioner works and if it doesn't work he knows how to fix it but just because he knows how the car operates doesn't mean he knows anything about the car or its parts came into existence the car manufacturer is the origin scientist he knows how the car operates but he also knows how all of its parts came into existence and I submit to you that the way something operates doesn't tell you how it came into existence the way the Pistons go up and down don't tell you how the Pistons came into existence the way the air-conditioner works doesn't tell you how the air-conditioner came into existence the question of origins is a categorically different question than the question of operation and this whole debate about creation versus evolution millions of years versus thousands of years as the Bible says those are ideas and models and stories in the area of origin science so it's not a battle of science versus religion it's a battle of as we will see different worldviews that are being used to reconstruct the unobserved past again just to make this clear we can look at animals we can see how they operate and how they function that's operation science but the question is how did the first originate we can look at the Grand Canyon we can look at the Colorado River and we can see that the Colorado River carries sediments and we can see their erosional features but the question is how did the Colorado River come into existence how did the Grand Canyon come into existence how did all those erosional features happen and was the river there first before the canyon or was the canyon there before the river these are questions of history and we are dealing with the unobservable unrepeatable past most evolutionists today and an awful lot of christians especially those who accept the millions of years either ignore this difference or deny that there is any significant difference between operation science and origin science but a few do recognize it ernst mayr one of the greatest evolutionists of the 20th century in america professor of heart at Harvard University in zoology and an atheist until his death at the age of 100 said evolution is a historical process that cannot be proven by the same arguments and methods by which purely physical or functional phenomena can be documented and I could give you quotes of some other evolutionists who see that the question of function is different than the question of history and origins for the first 1,800 years the almost universal belief in the church was that God created in six literal days a little over six thousand years ago and destroyed the world with a global year-long catastrophic flood there are some odd individuals who questioned that Augustine was confused about the days of Genesis but he didn't believe in millions of years he believed that everything was in an instant but he did believe that the earth was only about 6,000 years old and he did believe in a global catastrophic flood but about 200 years ago the idea of millions of years began to develop and so I want to look at how that idea developed and who some of the key people were and what they were thinking it wasn't just one person that developed this idea but between about 1770 and 1830 a number of views of Earth history developed one of the men who was very influential in this thinking was James Hutton he was he was up in Scotland and he studied medicine at the University but after he finished his studies he took over the family farm but his real love was geology and in 1788 he wrote a journal article and then in 1795 he published a long book arguing that the geological features of the earth were the result of untold ages of erosion and sedimentation he could see evidence of wind and water erosion on the land that would carry particles to the creeks which would carry it to the rivers which would carry those sediments to the ocean and dump those sediments on the ocean floor and then he could see evidence of volcanic activity in Scotland and so he imagined that the internal heat of the earth would harden those sediments on the ocean floor and then from time to time through some convulsion raised some of those sediments above sea level to become new land masses and so he said the continents are slowly being eroded into the ocean the ocean floor is being lifted up to become new continents which will eventually be eroded into the oceans which will eventually be lifted up to become new continents he said I can see no evidence of a beginning in the rock record now he didn't see a single continent erode into the ocean he didn't see a single continent to come out of the ocean he was speculating or imagining about the unobserved past to explain what he saw in the present then there was georges cuvier he was a comparative anatomist and paleontologist and as he studied the fossils that were found in and around paris he developed his theory of the earth and he speculated that the fossils in the various rock layers were the result of a series of catastrophic floods of a continental or global scale each one separated by long periods of time and in those catastrophes many creatures died they got buried in sediments and became fossils and then God either created new creatures after each catastrophe to replace the creatures that had perished or survivors repopulated the earth now he never saw a single one of those floods happen and produce a single one of those sedimentary layers with fossils he was speculating or imagining about the unobserved past then there was Charles Lyell Lyle was a trained in law at Oxford University he was born the year that Hutton died and he built a nut UNS ideas and he was independently wealthy so he had the time and the money to go out walking around looking at rocks and fossils and in 1830 he published the first of his three volumes of principles of geology building on Hutton he argued there have never been any catastrophic floods of a continental or global scale Oh a little flood here a little volcano the air of an earthquake here every so often but the primary processes of geological change he said are slow and gradual so three three views three key men and so by in the early 19th century we had three competing views of hearth history we had the catastrophes view of Cuvier and others who did believe in God and believed in a supernatural began SB but then after God created those first forms of life life went along for a long period of time and then there was one of those catastrophic floods of a continental or global scale wiping out most or all of the creatures living at the time survivors repopulated the earth or God created new creatures and life went along for a long period of time and there was another catastrophic flood and this happened many many times over untold ages he was clearly thinking millions of years then there was the view of Hutton and Lyell and from their writings we can't be sure if they believed in a supernatural beginning but on their timeline there were no seas no catastrophic floods of a continental or global scale only catastrophic events on par with what we see in recent history and that expanded earth history even more because the geological record was primarily the result of slow gradual erosion and deposition those were in contrast to the biblical traditional view which was defended by a group of authors that I focused on in my PhD research who collectively became known as the scriptural geologists and they believed Genesis so they believed in a supernatural creation week scw of creation in six days followed about sixteen hundred years later by Noah's Flood which these men believed was responsible for producing most of the geological record of rock layers and fossils and then the earth recovered from that event up to the present in this whole period from the very beginning to the president was only about six thousand years now they opposed both the catastrophes in the uniformitarian view but that was only one Christian response to these Old Earth ideas many Christians quickly began to accept the old earth ideas even while the catastrophists and the uniformitarian x' were arguing and so they had to try to find a way to fit those millions of years into the bible one approach this in regard to Genesis 1 was Thomas Chalmers he was a Presbyterian minister and a naturalist up in Scotland and in 1804 as a young pastor of 24 years old he began to preach what became known as the gap theory he said the Bible doesn't tell us how old the earth is it tells us how old man is about 6,000 years but the geologist can have all the time they want we'll just fit it between verse 1 and verse 2 of Genesis 1 that became a very popular view in the church then there was George Stanley Faber he was a respected Anglican theologian and in 1823 he published a book in which he argued for what became known as the de-age theory if we just take those days as figurative symbolic of long periods of time we can harmonize the Bible with what the geologists are saying that wasn't as popular as far as I can tell until about the middle of the nineteenth century because anyone who was reading that the geological literature could see that the order in which fossils appeared in the geological record according to the evolutionists according to the older geologists didn't match the order in which creatures were created according to Genesis so the gap theory seemed to be more popular well those are reinterpretations of Genesis 1 but if you're going to if you're going to fit millions of years into the Bible you've got to do something with Noah's Flood and so there were various approaches one was John Fleming at Presbyterian minister and in 1826 he published an article or article in which he argued that Noah's Flood was a global peaceful flood it was so peaceful it left no geological evidence and the proof he said was right there in the gia lot in the biblical Noah sent out a dove at the end of the flood it came back with an olive leaf in its beak and that's proof positive that the flood was so peaceful it didn't even damage the plants of course he was a zoologist I guess he didn't know that olive plants are one of the hardiest plants known to man they grow in almost any soil condition and you can start an olive plant from the bud from a bark from a branch from a root I don't know anybody that holds that view today because a global peaceful flood is equivalent to talking about square circles there's no such thing as a flood that leaves no evidence so a more popular view was that of John Pye Smith a Congregational theologian and in 1838 he published a book in which he argued that Noah's Flood was a local flood in the Mesopotamian valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers modern-day Iraq and is just described in exaggerated language in the Bible now all of those men I just mentioned were considered and would consider themselves and I would consider them conservative Christians they would have all affirmed that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but there was one other approach and that was the liberal theologians liberal theology had been developing on the European continent from the middle of the 18th century and it had been largely kept out of Britain and North America because of the influence of the great evangelical awakenings under the Wesley's and Whitfield in the UK and Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards and others in the United States but liberal theology began to seep into the churches in Britain in America in the 1810s and 1820s and the liberal theologians said you other people are all wrong because you're treating Genesis 1 to 11 as history it's not history it's mythology just like the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians and the Babylonians they had ancient flood myths and creation myths so the ancient Jews these are pre scientific primitive superstitious ideas so in the early 19th century we had these various compromises with old earth geology we had the gap theory that put all the millions of years between the first two verses of Genesis one the day age view that said each day represented long ages Noah's Flood was a global peaceful flood and Lois Noah's Flood was a local flood in Genesis myth and in the midst of all of that were those men that I focused on in my PhD research the scriptural geologists but we would call today young earth creationists and I found about 30 authors writing between about 1820 and 1850 in in Britain and they were raising biblical philosophical and geological arguments against these old earth views well if you want to learn more about them you can get my book the great turning point which is a shortened version of my PhD thesis but in that book and in that thesis I argued that contrary to what most historians of geology today say this controversy in the early 19th century was not as they call it the genesis geology debate it was not a conflict between the geologists who knew the rocks and bible-thumping fundamentalists who didn't know anything about geology rather what I argued was that the real nature of this debate was philosophical and religious it was a worldview conflict it was a conflict between the religious and philosophical worldview of one group of scientists and non-scientists against the religious and philosophical worldview of another group of scientists and non-scientists who were studying the very same rocks and fossils we don't have to get complicated here but we do need to understand this worldview conflict maybe you have heard of deism theism was a religion that developed in the late 17th and early 18th century Dias believed in God but they believed that God was distant and in the past he created the world at the beginning he built into it the laws of nature and then he let it develop and run according to those laws so kind of like a watchmaker who makes a watch and then he lets it run the way he designed it so in a deist view God is distant he's in the past he's not active in his creation there are no miracles there's no answer to prayer there's no prophecy there's no incarnation of Jesus Christ there's no resurrection and there's no atoning sacrifice for sin it was a religion of good works based on study of nature another view that developed at this time was atheism now there have been atheists in the past but in the history of humanity the vast majority of people have believed in some kind of God or gods but atheism really began to take hold in in Europe particularly in France where it led to the bloody French Revolution and of course the atheist says there is no God the universe is all there is contrast that with what the Bible says like deism biblical Christianity says that God is distinct from his creation if the creation disappeared God would still exist he is the creator but the Bible teaches one other very important thing about God related to our topic and that is that God is as theologians say imminent he is present everywhere in his creation upholding his creation by the power of his word and from time to time he works in his creation in an unusual way which the Bible calls an a miracle or theologians also called acts of divine providence so three different worldviews and those worldviews will affect what a scientist sees and how he interprets what he sees as he looks at the earth and tries to reconstruct the past history of the world now historians of science have a pretty good idea what the theology was of those men who helped to develop that Old Earth idea either by studying their published writings or their private journals and letters which many of them left quite a few copies of James Hutton was addy Esther and atheist historians aren't sure Cuvier was a deist or a vague theist he certainly believed in God but he wasn't a Bible believing Christian and Lyell was a deist or a Unitarian which for this topic doesn't make any difference so I want you to notice something very very important these men were not unbiased objective pursuers of truth there is no such person there never has been every scientist has a worldview every scientist either believes in God or he doesn't believe in God believes that God is active in the world or not active in the world believes the Bible is the Word of God or doesn't believe that every scientist has a worldview and that worldview affects what they see and how they interpret what they see as they try to reconstruct the unobserved past some of these men made their ideas very clear through what they wrote James Hutton said this the past history of our globe must be explained okay so now he's laying down a law of geological reasoning it must be explained he says by what can be seen to be happening now no powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle now what is he just ruled out with that law of geological reasoning he's ruled out creation creation wasn't happening when he wrote that sentence and creation wasn't natural it was supernatural what else has he ruled out by this statement by insisting that everything must be explained by present natural processes he's ruled out Noah's Flood newest Noah's Flood wasn't happening when he wrote that sentence and Noah's Flood was not natural well it was natural in the sense that water flowed downhill in Noah's Flood just like moving water does today and those moving waters eroded and carried sediments and deposited those sediments just like moving water does today but the flood wasn't simply a fluke of nature it wasn't simply an accidental hiccup in the course of nature it was a divine judgment against a sinful world so he's ruled out creation and the flood before he ever looked at the evidence in another place he said but surely general deluge is formed no part of the theory of the earth why why mr. Hutton why can't we have a general deluge which is an old way of saying global flood why can't we have a global flood in our earth history he tells us for or because the purpose of this earth is evidently to maintain vegetable and animal life and not to destroy them now you see the logic he says look look at our earth it's obviously designed to support plant and animal life we can't allow a global flood in our past because that would destroy all the plant and animal life what's he doing he's reasoning that the present is the key to the past fundamental error and that principle didn't come from the rocks and the fossils it came from his anti biblical worldview the present is not the key the past a 100% infallible account of the all-knowing eyewitness creator is the key to the past and the present biblical revelation is the key to the past to understanding the past and to understanding the present so we can look at those three views of Earth history and the catastrophes and the uniformitarian did have a different view but they were reasoning the same way they were reasoning that the present is the key to the past the uniformitarian were reasoning the present slow gradual processes are the key to explaining the past the catastrophes were saying no the present catastrophic processes are the key to the past but they both ignored the Bible the scriptural geologist said revelation is the key to the past and the present well Charles Lyell said this I've always been strongly impressed with the weight of an observation of an excellent writer and skilful geologist who said that for the sake of Revelation he's referring to the Bible as well as of science of truth in every form the physical part of geological inquiry ought to be conducted as if the Scriptures were not in existence well I wouldn't have any problem with that if there were nothing if there was nothing in the Bible describing any geologically significant global events but there are two the third day of creation when God caught cause dry land to appeared evidently part of the crust of the earth came up out of the water that covered the whole earth the first two days to become the dry land and that would have been a huge erosion and sedimentation event but if we looked at those sediments later we wouldn't find any fossils in them because God hadn't created the plants animals or people yet the second key event is Noah's Flood which was designed to destroy all the land animals birds and people not in the ark and by implication would have ripped up all the vegetation on the land and buried lots of creatures in sediments so when he says we ought to do geology as if the Scriptures weren't not in existence that is a very anti biblical perspective in fact writing in a private letter to one of his friends he said that he wanted to free the science of geology from Moses now isn't that an interesting statement what does he have against Moses he wants to silence God's eyewitness testimony remember in origin science had two possible sources of information eyewitness testimony and the observable evidence in the present he wants to silence God's eyewitness testimony so what Lyle and Hutton and others like them were advocating was a worldview with three basic assumptions I like to call them uniformitarian naturalism a big label for three very simple ideas the first is that nature is all that exists and not every geologist then or every scientist now believes that but most scientists do their scientific work as if that's true so they might believe in God on Sunday or Saturday or whenever they go to their religious services but when they do their science they do it as if nature is all that exists the second assumption that took control of geology everything can and indeed must be explained by time plus chance plus the laws of nature working on matter if you have those three things time enough of it millions and billions of years chance and the laws of nature the laws of physics and chemistry the laws of genetics if you have those three things you can explain the origin of rock layers and fossils you can explain the origin of living creatures you can explain the origin of stars and galaxies and planets and the earth itself you just need enough time chance in the laws of nature and the third assumption that took control of geology in the early 19th century is that the processes of geological change have always been operating in the past at the same rate frequency and power as we observe today Oh an occasional catastrophic event like we see today but primary processes of change have been slow and gradual and the earthquakes and the volcanoes and the tsunamis haven't really been any bigger on average per year and more frequent than we observe today three powerful assumptions that took control of science none of those points can be derived from looking at rocks and fossils they are philosophical and religious in nature so in the early 19th century we had these three competing views of Earth history well by about 1840 those first two views passed off the scene and the uniformitarian view became the ruling view in geology 1840 is also about the time when geology became a degree at the University prior to that you could take a series of lectures but you couldn't get a degree and 1840 is also about the time that geology became a paid profession prior to that geologists were independently wealthy and did the study of geology as a hobby so from 1840 on everybody who went to the University to study geology every geological society every geological journal was by this uniformitarian way of thinking slow gradual processes will explain everything you see and Charles Darwin was influenced by those ideas he went on his famous five-year voyage around the world in 1831 and he took on the HMS Beagle with him the first volume of Charles Lyell's book principles of geology and he absorbed Lyles thinking and he said I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyle's brains and that I never acknowledged this sufficiently nor do I know how I can without saying so in so many words for I've always thought that the great merit of the principles of geology was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind and therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell one yet saw it partially through his eyes so Darwin was just taking the principles of uniformitarian naturalism that developed in geology and applied them to biology slow gradual processes will explain everything you see in the rocks and fossils slow gradual processes will explain everything you see in living things a lot of Christians today are concerned about Charles Darwin's theory they reject the idea that we evolved from ape-like creatures they reject the idea that all plants and animals are descended from a common ancestor and that dinosaurs evolved into birds and fish walked out on the land and became amphibians they see the great complexity of life and they have lots of good scientific reasons for rejecting that but most Christians today have accepted the millions of years and they don't realize that the problem is not Darwin the problem is Lyle and Hutton the problem is the worldview assumptions that took control of science through Hutton and Lyell that were then adopted by Darwin and then adopted in all the other sciences so what we need to understand is that no scientist goes out and looks at the world with an empty mind or we could say no scientist goes out and looks at the world without a pair of glasses on philosophical glasses we call them evolutionary glasses or biblical glasses and most scientists in the world including most Christian scientists are wearing evolutionary glasses they have them they have adopted the principles of thinking the assumptions of Lyle and Hutton and Darwin but Christians shouldn't be wearing those evolutionized glasses they should be wearing biblical glasses they should be taking the eyewitness testimony of the creator his truth should guide their thinking about the world as they study the world to understand the history of the rocks and the fossils or the history of life well let me illustrate with a series of pictures what I've been talking about on the left here you have the the Old Earth geologist and he had a certain set of assumptions those naturalistic assumptions that I just defined for you the biblical Christians don't accept those assumptions they have a biblical worldview they believe God's eyewitness testimony they believe what God says about creation in six days about 6,000 years ago what he says about a global flood at the time of Noah that destroyed the earth but here's what happened in the 19th century the geologist said both some Christian and secular listen if you want to help us understand the rocks of the earth and the history of the earth you need to lay down your Bible because you're biased you need to come over to this neutral territory and so a lot of Christians lay down their Bibles and they went over to what they thought was neutral ground but those old earth geologists they never laid down their assumptions they never got in that neutral ground and once the Christians were in what they thought was neutral ground the battle was over because there really is no neutral ground everybody has a worldview now in operation science worldview assumptions don't have much influence because operation science is constrained by the principle of repeatable observable experiments but in origin science worldview is critical because what you believe about God in his word will affect what you see and how you interpret what you see as you try to reconstruct the unobserved past and the origin of things so we need to understand a fundamental point and that is that all the geologists in the early 19th century and today all have the same rocks and fossils to study they have the same Grand Canyon the same White Cliffs of Dover to study they don't have different ones but if they start with naturalistic assumptions they're going to come up with the idea of an Old Earth and no global flood but if they start with biblical assumptions and look at the very same evidence the very same rocks and fossils they see all kinds of evidence that confirms a young earth in a global flood well as far as I can tell by about 1840 1850 virtually the whole church had accepted the millions of years and they didn't realize that the battle is not at the level of the rocks and the fossils the battle is at the level of the assumptions that are used to interpret the evidence it's a battle of worldviews well what happened after that as I said from by about 1850 virtually the whole church and except for the millions of years now I want to show you what and I'm gonna mention some people and before I do I want to draw your attention to another passage of Scripture first Timothy chapter 6 Paul says so Timothy guard what was entrusted to you avoiding worldly and empty chatter in the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith Paul said be careful their ideas out there that sound like truth that sound like knowledge that are not really true they're falsely so-called and if you're not careful Paul says to Timothy you or the people in your church will go astray one translation says they will be shipwrecked regarding the faith I'm going to show you some people who personally did not go astray but their compromise their acceptance of the millions of years has led many others astray one of those was Charles Haddon Spurgeon the great Baptist preacher in London he said in a sermon in 1855 at the age of twenty-one can anyone tell me when the beginning was years ago we thought the beginning of this world was when Adam came upon it yes that is what the church believed for the first 1,800 years and what faithful Jews believed for 1,400 years before that but Spurgeon went on we have discovered that thousands of years before that God was preparing chaotic matter to make it a fit abode for man putting races of creatures upon it who might die and leave behind the marks of his handiwork and marvelous skill before he tried his hand unmanned and another sermon that same year he talked about millions of years and in another sermon about 20 years later he talked about millions of years and geology he evidently believed in the gap theory although he wrote very little on this topic in his whole pastoral career he didn't understand where the millions of ears idea came from then there was CI Scofield a great American Bible scholar in 1909 he published his reference Bible millions of copies went out into the english-speaking world it was translated into some of their languages and in the marginal note of Genesis 1 verse 2 he had the gap theory with this statement the first creative act refers to the dateless past and gives scope for all the geological ages that statement was in the Scofield reference to Bible through multiple editions until 1967 when the editors modified it a little bit but what they have still leaves the door open for millions of years Scofield was a great Bible teacher but he didn't understand where the millions of ears came from he didn't understand the assumptions embedded in geology to arrive at those ages then there was the sad story at Princeton seminary which has been duplicated at many other Christian educational institutions Charles Hodge was the lead theologian in the mid to late 19th century he held to an Old Earth but he was anti evolution he said the bible doesn't say how old the earth is he died in his son a a hodge became the lead theologian he accepted the millions of years but he was he was toying with the idea of evolution that maybe just maybe God guided the process of evolution he died BB Warfield became the lead theologian he was even warmer to the idea of evolution as long as God was guiding it he wrote quite a bit on this subject he was an ardent evolutionist until his conversion to light to faith in Christ in his late teens but in all of his writings he never carefully dealt with the biblical text and he died in 1921 Princeton seminary went downhill very rapid into liberal theology after that and there are a number of reasons for that but I think one of them was this compromise with evolutionary old earth thinking well then there was Charles Templeton he was a great evangelist a contemporary of Billy Graham he preached the thousands in the United States and in Great Britain and led many thousands to Christ but he had questions about evolution he didn't know what to do with it and so he decided to go to seminary to get answers he went to Princeton seminary in the late 1940s he didn't get answers he got professors teaching him that Genesis 1 to 11 is mythology he came out of seminary preached for a few more years left the ministry went into journalism died in 2001 as an atheist and the last book he wrote was entitled farewell to God my reasons for rejecting the Christian faith and at the end of that book he said this I believe that there is no Supreme Being with human attributes no God in the biblical sense but that the life is the result of timeless evolutionary forces having reached its present transient state over millions of years you see ideas have consequences Charles Hodge was Old Earth but anti-evolution his son was Old Earth and maybe maybe evolution as long as God is guiding the process BB Warfield was even warmer to evolution as long as God is guiding it and after they died and I believe they went to heaven Charles Templeton went to their seminary and became an apostate ideas have consequences and sometimes it takes decades before we see the fruit of false ideas Davis Young is professor emeritus of geology at Calvin College in the state of Michigan in America is the sign of the great Old Testament scholar EJ young he more than anyone else has influenced modern evangelical theologians to accept the millions of years I know that from reading their theological works and they cite his work in one of his books he said this the Christian who believes that the idea of an ancient earth is unbiblical would do better to deny the validity of any kind of historical geology and insist that the rocks must be the product of pure miracle rather than tried to explain them in terms of the noahic flood an examination of the earth apart from ideological presuppositions is bound to lead to the conclusion that it is ancient I hope you see now that that the notion that you can study the earth apart from ideological presuppositions is absolutely false that cannot be farther from the truth there is no geologist including Davis Young who does studies the rocks and fossils apart from ideological presuppositions he absorbed the uniformitarian worldview when he studied geology and he's been teaching it's subtly to Christians ever since so the issue is not what are the rocks and the fossils the issue is what are the assumptions that we're using to interpret what glasses are we wearing well as I said Davis Young has influenced a lot of evangelical theologians one of the men he has influenced as C John Collins one of the great Old Testament scholars in America professor of Old Testament at covenant Seminary in st. Louis an editor of the notes in the ESV Study Bible in the Old Testament in his book science and faith where he argues for something like the day age you he says I conclude then that I have no reason to disbelieve the standard theories of the geologists including their estimate for the age of the earth they may be wrong for all I know but if they are wrong it is not because they have improperly smuggled philosophical assumptions into their work that is exactly what they have done well the early geologists were smuggling philosophical assumptions into their work and then they trained the next generations of geologists over the last 150 years to think with those philosophical assumptions and they haven't realized that they've been smuggling them into their work nothing could be farther from the truth my favorite professor in seminary so dr. Collins is wearing evolutionized glasses when it comes to interpreting the early chapters of Genesis my favorite professor in seminary was Wayne Grudem I was he was my advisor for three years I was his teaching assistant for one year great Bible teacher I learned a lot from him but in his systematic theology which has been translated into 12 major languages and they're working on I think about six other languages he says this although our conclusions are tentative at this point in our understanding scripture seems to be more easily understood to suggest that's his italics but not to require a young earth view while the observable facts of creation seem increasingly to favor an Old Earth view no dr. Grudem it is not the observable facts it is the anti-biblical philosophical assumptions that have been used to interpret some of the observable facts he doesn't understand where the millions of years idea came from and I have tried ever since I was in seminary in the late 1980s to get him to rethink that position he doesn't understand that those geologists are all wearing evolutionized glasses naturalistic uniformity assumptions controlling their interpretation of the geological evidence so for the last 200 years the scientists the geologists have been saying the rock layers show that the earth is millions of years old you have to believe me I'm a scientists and most theologians and Bible scholars have said well we'll just have to accept the millions of years and add it to the Bible somehow the gap theory the day age view and local flood idea and many other views we could talk about talk about if we had time I want to show you some people that have accepted those ideas and I want to say at the very beginning here I am NOT saying these men are heretics I'm not saying they're horrible Christians I'm not saying that they are heretics I'm not saying that they didn't love their wives that they didn't live exemplary lives but I am saying and I can document that they were all compromised with the millions of years they didn't understand where the evolutionary the millions of years idea came from we've already talked about Spurgeon Hodge Warfield Scofield J Gresham machen who left Westminster left Princeton to start Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia James Montgomery boys one of the great Bible teachers in America Gleeson Archer who taught Old Testament at my seminary knew 26 ancient Near Eastern languages Francis Schaeffer a great apologist I've benefited from many of his books Billy Graham God used him in a powerful way to lead many to Christ Jay Vernon Vernon McGee a Bible teacher on the radio John Stott a famous British theologian I've gotten a number of his books that have been very helpful and then most of our great apologists in the United States our most famous ones William Lane Craig JP Moreland Paul copán Norman Geisler who died recently and can agree Frank Turek John Lennox in England Greg cuckoo all of these men accept the millions of years they don't think it matters they're philosophers but don't understand the philosophical roots of the Old Earth view and I've tried to interact with several of them and they're not even willing to engage in this in the discussion our three most influential schools in the United States and training the next generation of apologist defenders of the faith Biola southern evangelical seminary and Veritas International University they're all influencing the students to accept the idea of millions of years we could talk about Ravi Zacharias William demske Lee Strobel Ken Keithley C John Collins with Millard Eric's and Wayne Grudem Eric Metaxas Sean McDowell Tim Keller well-known people in the United States and Britain John Piper Ross Guinness Walter Kaiser Bruce Bruce Walt key da Carson J I Packer Steven Mayer Michael Horton RC sprawl Andy Stanley I can go on and on all of these men they're not a horrible man they're good men they've done a lot of good for the church but they haven't understood where the millions of years idea comes from and they have led the church to think you can accept the millions of years the age of the earth doesn't matter we can just agree to disagree it's a side issue it's not important but I need to remind you if you're a Christian that we shouldn't have any evangelical Pope's in our lives and we don't have an evangelical Cardinal College of Cardinals determining for us what is true the Bible must be our supreme authority truth is not determined by majority vote not majority vote in science and not majority vote in the 20th and 21st century in the church we must test everything against the Word of God a lot of Christians I found in my travels here in in other countries say well we don't believe in evolution what they mean is they don't believe in biological evolution but they accept the millions of years and they don't realize that evolution is really a three-part theory to explain all of reality so we have biological evolution explain the origin of life and the origin of man and then geological evolution to explain the origin of the rock layers and fossils and the earth itself and then cosmological evolution to explain the origin of stars and galaxies and solar systems it's all evolution and I could give you quotes from leading evolutionists who say that it's all evolution it's all driven by the same naturalistic uniformitarian assumptions it's based on the assumptions of naturalism which is another name for atheism so even if we don't accept biological and human evolution if we still accept cosmological and geological evolution we're still accepting that naturalistic worldview all of that is still based on naturalism well so you wrap up let me give you a series of pictures to illustrate what I've been saying and hopefully give you a little mental relief back in the 18th and 19th century the church was saying come to Jesus come to the cross and be saved and the enemies of the gospel announced an attack launched an attack against that gospel it was the idea of millions of years it wasn't aimed at the cross it was aimed at the foundation of the cross but the idea of millions of years was aimed at the book of Genesis and most of the church said yeah but it didn't hit the cross don't worry about the age of the earth that's not important the Bible is not about geology it's about salvation now if the enemies of the cross had aimed at the cross alarm bells would have gone off in the church and and they would have risen up in defense but the enemies are smart they aimed at the foundation of the cross and most of the church said it's just a side issue but what does Psalm 11 3 say if the foundations are destroyed what can righteous do and so over the last 200 years they've just been a relentless bombardment of the foundations of the Christian faith found in the book of Genesis the dating methods a radiometric dating methods came in the early 20th century Darwin's theory of evolution and the big bang theory in the 20th century hammering away at Genesis it is the most attacked part of the Bible over the last 200 years and it has caused incredible damage and I could give you quotes by evolutionists who see this as a direct hit undermine Genesis and you destroy the gospel they say that most of the church says it didn't hit the cross the age of the earth doesn't matter and Christians have continued to invent new ways of interpreting Genesis to try to fit millions of years into the Bible what happened in the Garden of Eden when the serpent came to Eve and he said has God said he asked a question he got her doubting and confused about what God said and once he got her doubting God's Word then he went for the kill he said you won't die God's lying to you go ahead and eat that fruit so first he got her to doubt God's Word and then he got her to deny God's Word and that worked so well that I've observed Satan has been using that strategy ever since get Christians to doubt God's Word and then deny God's Word and I've observed that Satan is not picky he's not choosy he's actually excited to use Christians to get other Christians to doubt and deny God's Word and Paul warned in 2nd Corinthians 11 but as I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and so what have we seen in Western Europe Great Britain and North America over the last 200 years growing unbelief they are the most pagan the most anti-christian cultures in the world now they are the hardest place to lead somebody to Christ it is easier to lead a Muslim to Christ today in a Muslim country than it is to lead a Western European or an American to Christ the church is compromised with millions of years has not caused people to become more open to the gospel but less open so we've seen this 200 years slippery slide first Christians rejected the biblical chronology and the global flood and then they rejected the supernatural creation of plants and animals and then they rejected the supernatural creation of Adam and then they rejected the historicity of Adam and then now in the 20th century they're rejecting biblical morality accepting divorce the lgd LGBTQ revolution abortion and rejecting the gospel and so evangelicals are always just a few decades behind the Liberals well I want to end here just before I look at some resources that might help you excuse me I want to read to you a statement written by an Anglican pastor in 1834 he wrote a book popular geology subversive of divine revelation I read the book carefully he didn't know anything about geology his writings show he didn't know anything about geology but he did believe his Bible and he was a discerning reader of geological books and I want you to listen to what he had to say in 1834 now this is this is 19th century English but I think you'll understand it he said many Reverend geologists that's because some of the early geologists were also ordained clergyman many Reverend geologists who would events their reverence for the divine revelation by making a distinction between its historical and its moral portions and maintaining that the latter only is inspired an absolute truth but that the former is not so and therefore is open to any latitude of philosophic and scientific interpretation or even to a total denial according to these impious and infidel modifiers and separators there is not one third of the Word of God that is inspired for not more nor perhaps so much of that word is occupied an abstract moral revelation instruction and precept the other 2/3 therefore are open to any scientific modification and interpretation or if scientifically required to a total denial it may however basic be safely asserted that whoever professedly before men disbelieves the inspiration of any part of revelation disbelieves in the sight of god its inspiration altogether if such principles were permitted of the most high to proceed to their ultimate drifts and tendencies how long before they will be sweeping all faiths and revealed and inspired veracity from off the face of the earth what the consequences of such things must be to a revelation possessing land time will rapidly and awfully unfold in its opening pages of national skepticism infidelity and apostasy and of God's righteous vengeance on the same that's 1834 and I would submit to you that his words were prophetic and that the state of the spiritual and moral State of Britain and North America today far exceeds what he could have imagined it matters what we believe about the history in the Bible because the history in the Bible is foundational to the theology and the morality the Bible is not just a collection of pious statements religious and moral pronouncements it is about God's acts in time-space history and that history is foundational to the theology and the morality destroy the history in people's minds and it'll it won't be long before they reject the theology and the morality I really unpacked this idea in my last chapter in a book that I edited called searching for Adam and I show the connection between the rejection of Adam today that is widespread in the church and the compromise with millions of years and so God has raised up creation ministries like Answers in Genesis and a number of other ministries in in in the UK and in America and Canada and South Africa in many other countries to help rebuild the foundations to help the church know that we can believe this book right from the very first verse and then we've developed resources to shoot down those ideas and expose them as philosophy masquerading as science and then we go out and do seminars and when this whole covered 19 crisis ends and we can get back out into churches we'll be going out into churches teaching them so that they can then have the the answers and the understanding to shoot down those ideas that come to the people in their church the the students the youth and then the church can say come to Jesus come to the cross and be saved and they'll be integrity in the message because he'll be saying the gospel in this book is true because the history in this book is true right from the very first verse so we're in a war folks Christians you need to understand we're in a war a war of ideas and if you're not a Christian you need to understand and there's a war of ideas going on truth against lies and the god of this world Satan has blinded people and lied to the world and used men to lie and to speculate and imagine false histories and false ideas you need to come to Christ well there's a number of resources that I would recommend that you look at the the for answers books for teenagers and adults which answer the 130 most asked questions what about dinosaurs what about carbon dating where did Cain get his wife where'd the so-called races of people come from where was the flood global was the that were the days of creation literal and how can you see distant starlight in a young universe these are the the questions people are asking today and you don't need a science degree to understand the answers each chapters on a different question this lecture is available if you want to watch it again or share it with somebody like in a living in a setting in your home the great turning point if you want to dig into the history more deeply six days by Ken Ham explains in layman's terms what's wrong with all these Old Earth ideas in the church that they aged view the gap theory the framework hypothesis and then a more in-depth defense of the literal truth of Genesis is this book that I co edited and contributed to with thirteen other scholars that's an in-depth book be a great gift for your pastor if he doesn't believe Genesis searching for Adam I mentioned six fourteen or sixteen authors defending the literal truth about Adam biblically theologically historically scientifically genetically anatomically ethically a full-blown defense of the truth of Genesis about Adam in our the origin of the human race the flood of evidence answers about 427 questions about Noah's Flood and Noah's ARC easy-to-read question-and-answer format the young earth by John Morris beautifully colored with illustrator with color photos it's got a great chapter on radiometric dating great for teenagers and adults if you want something more in depth Andrew Snelling is our PhD geologist he's done geological research on four continents and this is a two-volume I think fifteen hundred page work on the geological evidence for Noah's Flood and a young earth and so you can get that as a pack the glasshouse answering are showing what's wrong with some of the most popular defenses of evolution and millions of years in the popular press and the textbooks and we have answers books for grade school kids five to eleven year olds each one answers about 20 questions with a one-page answer great for parents and grandparents to discuss these things with the children we have preschool books like n is for Noah we have a book on dinosaurs a number of books on dinosaurs and a DVD on dinosaurs and my lecture on what's wrong with the older the views in the church lectures by Andrew Snelling and the geological evidence lots and lots of resources to help you see the lie of millions of years and this one has a short video they're actually six short videos that are about three to five minutes long one of those is on radiometric dating to help you understand that another one is on fossils in the flood another one is on the nature of science now historical science vs. experimental science so those will really help you and then dr. Snelling has an in-depth lecture for laypeople and students on radiometric dating we have a great family-friendly resource the answers magazine comes six times a year it's got a center section for the really little kids teaching the Christian biblical worldview not just about science but all kinds of other issues that we encounter we have a free newsletter that comes twelve times a year and you can sign up for that on our website and thousands of articles on our website we're putting more up all the time tremendous resource and there you can learn about our Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter which are closed right now because of the cove in nineteen but we're hoping we'll be opening in the next few weeks and so encourage you to come over to see those in northern kentucky in the united states on our website we have a lot of live programs every day of the week at these various times you can find out about that on our web site and we've just launched our answers TV where all our videos will be available online in one place and you can try it out for a week free and then it's a very modest annual price or monthly price to have access to hundreds and hundreds of videos and by this summer sometime we'll have those available with an app for your phone or or tablet well let me close with two quotes Michael Denton evolution etherion crisis in 1985 he said today it is perhaps a Darwinian view of nature more than any other that is responsible if the agnostic and skeptical outlook of the 20th century I agree with that statement but what's significant is Michael Denton then is and as far as I know today was and still is an agnostic that's a very astute observation I agree with him but the problem did not start with Charles Darwin the problem began the revolution began when Ernst Mayr who I quoted at the beginning tells us when it began not when Darwin published his book but when it became obvious that the earth was very ancient rather than having been created only 6,000 years ago this finding was the snowball that started the whole avalanche the problem started with the rejection of the biblical chronology and the global flood but it didn't become obvious by looking at rocks and fossils it became obvious by men embracing an anti biblical philosophical worldview called naturalism and uniform pterri anism so we need another Reformation in the church we need to return to the truth of Genesis 1 to 11 and I encourage you if you're a Christian to believe God's Word Psalm 40 verse 4 says how blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust and has not turned to the proud nor to those who lapse into falsehood over the last 200 years most of the church has followed those who lapse into falsehood instead of trusting the Lord and he proverbs 29:25 says the fear of man brings a snare but he who trusts in the Lord will be safe we need a new fear of the Lord in the church but too many Christians who are fearing what scientists say instead of fearing what God says and as we trust in him we will be safe no matter what comes in the days ahead thank you for listening and I pray that you will investigate those resources to learn more god bless you thanks to Terry what what an amazing talk for people to understand you clearly showed that philosophical assumptions there by many has been smuggled in to how we understand the book of Genesis and so if you've been watching tonight just let me say if you have any questions for dr. Moore's and then please do write those in the comment section quickly and we'll try and get to them also know that all the resources Terry mentioned are available in our UK store so if you just go to Answers in Genesis org and go to the store at the moment we're still doing a 20% offer a discount offer on all the resources and now is the time to get yourself equipped and even get those resources into the hands of your pastors and your friends in church Terry can ask you a question and you don't have to give names here but you mentioned the fact that you spoken to some of those leading apologists theologians how the conversations with those people normally go usually they are very short they don't really want to talk about it I've offered them a free copy of my DVD millions of years the grand illusion I've offered them in some cases a copy of my book the great turning point and they they don't want it they don't want to read it their their minds are closed they are so convinced that the scientific majority has proven millions of years that they're not gonna they're not gonna look at it and they often say to me teri I don't have the scientific qualifications to evaluate the arguments and so I'm not going to read what the creation scientists say my response to that kind of answer is well then if you don't have the scientific training you shouldn't believe anything that the secular scientists say either because you don't have the ability to evaluate what they're saying that is an erroneous objection these these people that I'm talking to have brilliant minds they're trained PhD scholars they have the intellectual skills to be able to look at at arguments on both sides and evaluate the reasonableness and they certainly all have a responsibility to look at the Word of God that they profess is the inspired inerrant Word of the Creator so it it breaks my heart I don't know what to do except to continue to speak and try to talk to them we've also tried to get many of them on a special trip called the Christian leaders trip through the Grand Canyon the last 12 years we've taken over 250 men from 24 countries and we intentionally invite people who hold an older view or even a theistic evolution view to come and just listen to our geologists and Old Testament scholar and and many of them won't come even though it's a highly scholarship trip so it's it's really a battle of truth yeah some that's the question do you think there is much difference between theistic evolution and deism no not really theistic evolution basically says well kind of two different perspectives one is that God created the the infant Tessa Mele small particle of mass energy space that that went bang and expelled expanded and he built into that little bit of matter energy space the laws of nature and let it develop or a slightly different view that God was mysteriously guiding the process over the millions of years but so hidden that no scientists can actually directly see any evidence of his manipulating influence but either way in in actual fact it's it's it's a deistic view yeah so except that the theistic evolutionists many of them at least the ones who profess to be evangelicals would say they believe in in miracles and they believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins and was raised from the dead so they're not total Deus they're like 95% deist yeah liberal liberal theologians would tend more to two days and yeah someone's asked the question that what do you think of Ravi Zacharias and Tim Keller about their views on Genesis well Tim Keller says he's an old earther but he has written a white paper a lengthy paper for BioLogos which is a theistic evolution group and it's clear I've watched him interviewed by Eric Metaxas and it's clear he hasn't done his homework on this issue and Ravi Zacharias I think avoids the issue but he his ministry very much links up with John Lennox who accepts the millions of years and believes in a view that is that a gap before the six days that start according to him in verse three of Genesis 1 and then the days are literal but there's a gap of an unknown amount of time between each of the days so he just doesn't he just hasn't investigated the issue and again I've met John Lennox I actually stayed in his home once while I was doing my PhD he's a wonderful man he's a brother in Christ but and Ravi Zacharias has done tremendous things to help the church but they don't understand this issue and they don't seem to be willing to really deal with the biblical text and with the creationist scientific arguments now of course we met we don't know people's motivations but do you think the reason that is is because of pride or do you think they just don't want the trouble that comes with believing in a young earth and in biblical creation well I think I think there there's a couple of things and you're right we can't I can't I can't evaluate anybody's motives but the Bible talks about the fear of man we're all susceptible to that I am you are everybody who is listening to us we care what other people think about us and in the scientific community and in the theological community there is suffering if you take a young earth view there's also the fact that you have two hundred years of compromise with some of the greatest evangelical Bible believing men saying the age of the earth doesn't matter and that history I've heard it from some of these modern men saying are you saying that that Hajj and Warfield and and these men were wrong and I'm saying yes they were wrong on this but the only person who never made a mistake was the Lord Jesus Christ everybody else makes mistakes so there's that factor there's just the the pressure of groupthink that you know it's the popular view to defend intelligent design and that God created but not defend the truth of Genesis yeah someone commented truth is always a minority view in this fallen world which is exactly right the prophets were very lonely in the Old Testament the the Apostles were all dead a few decades after Jesus the church has always suffered persecution and we've in in Britain and America in in Western Europe we've we've been living in it in really an unrealistic world because most of the church and the rest of the world and most of the church in the rest of history has suffered persecution of various forms from scoffing and laughter and ridicule to loss of job loss of advancement or or prison or death so where we're going I believe we're going to see that in Britain and in North America and Western Europe in the days ahead and and we're not going to be faithful to Christ if we don't cling to his word yeah what about someone who maybe in a church let's say with them a pastor who's I'm willing to listen to them on this issue what advice would you give to that person if they can't move churches because of there may be nothing else around well I would certainly pray for revival in your pastor pray that God will somehow get his attention and certainly humbly try to keep giving him a short article or a book to read or a video to watch and you have to you have to know where your pastor is at if he's if he tends to be a deep reader and he wants he you know he wants a book of substance don't give him a short article he'll just dismiss it that's too shallow other pastors they don't have time read books they want something short so you need to assess where your pastures at but be praying for them and I think with what's going on in the in the world right now with this global pandemic and the increasing persecution of Christians that we need to pray for a revival in the church and that God's Spirit will really get a hold of these pastors and bring them to repentance over their unbelief and begin to preach and do their homework so we got a lot of praying to do yeah someone's asked and he's he's obviously got a bit of knowledge because he said one with the European Leadership Forum not allow you to participate last year I have no idea but I mean they said that there just wasn't enough room or you know that they want to have Europeans I had filled out my application very thoroughly explaining that I had lived in Europe for almost 20 years in Eastern Europe in Western Europe and Britain I have a great passion and burden for Europe I've been back to speak on creation in mainly in Eastern Europe but some in East in Western Europe over the last 20 years with Answers in Genesis and so you know I put all of that in my application for attending but it didn't happen so I just leave that in the sovereign hand of God yeah and we we do find sometimes even these topics in just to be too controversial for conferences for forums for people to handle them because they think it's gonna yeah there'll be too divisive but you know there's so many divisive issues in the church and in the culture and the non-christian world you know if we say well the the non-christian world's going to scoff at us and they're they're not going to listen to us they scoff at us for believing in the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus and believing that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that he's the only way to heaven so you know we're not gaining anything by by giving a giving ground away uncertain issues yeah yeah Paul told the Corinthians we become fools for Christ's sake not that we've become foolish but that we become fools we don't embrace the wisdom of the world but rather we trust in the finished work of Christ and what he taught right Terry thank you for your time last night I know many people in the comment section are really thankful for your lecture have really appreciated it and so appreciate your time tonight and for everyone who's been watching we do thank you for your time and I pray that this will encourage you in your faith but that you'll also take this information and share it with others share with people in your friends circles the people that you know in the church your pasta if he is not yet thought about this issue please get this information to him so good night and God bless god bless
