Session 1 Q&A with Dr. Hugh Ross

I want to kind of flush this out because this is you've really hit at the heart of what was so transformative for me I grew up in the south and we were sort of indoctrinated into a young earth creation model that just made it so difficult going through school to to mesh any of my Christianity with you know with science science was the area that interested me the most and it was just there was just this total disconnect because I was fearful of every new finding that would come out and then I run into you who bases his entire ministry on all the latest scientific research and it all proves Scripture and and the big moment for me was understanding that there's not a big difference between young earth and Old Earth may be how do you how do you even get into this I don't want to spend another hour on this but the just that little tweak for me in understanding that that was not a I was not denying scripture to believe that the earth literally has been here for millions of years so how does that work how does that work with Scripture ah well notice that the age of the earth in the universe are not in any of the Creed's of the Church the Creed's basically focus on the essentials for the Christian faith but what is in the Creed's is that God has revealed himself through two books a book of nature and the book of Scripture and so as you look at Isaiah job and Jeremiah basically telling us if you're a follower of God you have to be a theologian don't leave it up to experts like yourself we're all to be involved in studying God's Word but likewise are all commanded to be a scientist don't leave it up to experts like myself were all commanded to study the book of nature and because God reveals himself without error through both books they're not going to disagree more over what I come here with Ron is this message that the more we learn about nature the more evidence we gain for the supernatural handiwork of God that's I'm gonna be talking about tomorrow just in the past few weeks back when I'm on University campuses I tell the skeptics an atheist if you're not convinced today wait one month and see all the emerging discoveries that give us an even stronger case for the Christian faith but in terms of the age of the earth issue old earth creationist and young earth creationists are only separated by six zeros it's only a factor of a million and keep in mind that the non-theist don't need six zeros they need thousands of zeros and so why should we let six zeros separators and yeah I thought evolution you're talking about for evolution to even be plausible they need the separation between Old Earth young earth is the few zeros but they need thousands of zeros they do and when I came to Christ it was through just reading a Gideon Bible I wasn't part of a church I didn't know other Christians and it was immediately obvious to me that these creation days had to be long time periods I mean as I read Genesis the word days used to put three different definitions creation day one it's contrasting days and nights that's day four the daylight hours creation day forest contrasting seasons days and years and that's Dave for 24 hours but Genesis 2:4 uses the word day for the entirety of creation history that's day as a long passage of time the other thing that caught my attention you've got an evening in a morning for the first six days which tells us that each day as a start point and an end point but there is no evening and morning for day seven as a read through the rest of the Bible I found three texts Psalm 95 John 5 and Hebrews 4 that tell us were still in God's seventh day and it's the day when God stops creating I said that explains why so many astronomers believe in God and so few biologists because the astronomers are researching the distant past whereas most biologists are focused on the human era for six days God creates on the seventh day he stops creating and something that really impacted me the first time that picked up a Bible part of my story was I started seriously studying astronomy when I was seven I was reading five books on physics and astronomy a week and when I was 10 and a half my parents thought I was being obsessive I'm not sure where they got that from that they felt that way and so they said we gotta get hew out of just physics and astronomy so they bought our book this bought our family this big thick book and evolutionary biology I was the only one in the family that read it but I told my parents bob-dad the numbers don't add up there's all a speciation before humanity and virtually none afterwards can you tell me why I said go ask your science teachers my science teachers say go talk to those professors you know nobody gave me an answer until I picked up the Bible for the first time and read for six days God creates on the seventh day he stops creating and so that perspective answer for me the fossil record enigma and put my mind at pieces as aha this is how it all works out and so it took me eight years after I became a Christian to meet anybody who thought that the Bible was a young earth book but the first time I met young earth creation is like where did you get that from how did you get that oh yeah where did we get this from I mean where did this this kick in because as you've said the the church hasn't really believed that oh oh well I asked my young earth friends you mean how did you ever come to this perspective that the days are only 24 hours and they said well you know they thought that the text was saying the Sun wasn't created till the fourth day and you got plants on the third days none of a short period of time between the first plants and the appearance of the Sun I said well notice that it says let there be light on creation day 1 and in Genesis 1:1 us as God created the heavens and the earth I remember reading the Bible for the first time as saying what are these heavens and earth and had discovered the word universe never shows up in the Old Testament there is no biblical word for universe but they got this phrase that heavens and the earth it's used 9 times in the Old Testament consistently referring took a totality of physical reality all matter energy space and time so God creates light in the beginning but the light doesn't show up on the surface of the earth until creation day 1 but the atmosphere goes out so you figure out that Genesis is written from a a physical perspective on the earth that's what I discovered coming here the United States is that most people getting a public education only gets snippets of the scientific method right I was taught the scientific method in grade 1 we got a little more detail and grade 2 we got at all 12 years so that was built into my and of course I saw that in my scientific studies as well the scientific method comes from the pages of scripture I mean there's the Scottish academic press has written a 28 volume set documenting the origin of the scientific method it comes out of the creation passages in the Bible step one of the scientific method do not interpret until you establish a point of view Genesis 1:2 the Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the waters of planet Earth that's the point of view from which were to interpret to six days so you're standing your surface looking up the clouds not down on the clouds and job 38 eight nine makes it explicit where it says God had wrapped the Seas with clouds that kept the Seas dark because Genesis 1:2 says it was dark on the surface of the waters not because there was no light not because there is no Sun but because the atmosphere was opaque to light tration day one God transforms the atmosphere from being opaque to translucent and that DVD were giving away it talks about a brand new discovery that physicists have made where they took the early atmosphere of the earth which had very little oxygen in it and then they increased the oxygen content from less than 1% to 8% because we know the oxygen jumped up very rapidly at the same time that animals appeared animals need a minimum of a percent oxygen and what they found out is when they went from less than 1% to 8% and less than 1% Earth's atmosphere is so hazy it's impossible to see the Sun Moon and stars from the surface of the earth as you pushed up to 8% the atmosphere becomes transparent creation day 4 it says let there be the great lights so they may serve as signs to mark seasons days and years from the perspective of a surface of Earth that's referring to the future animals the animals are the one kind of life on planet Earth that needs to know the position of the Sun Moon and stars to regulate their complex biological clocks but just a few months ago physicists proved that creation day for and creation day 5 got on all right making the point the more we learn about science the stronger case we get for the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible that's what we're giving away tonight man I mean talk about clarity so so the church I mean like I said growing up in the south we had such a lockdown on the fact that this was 24-hour periods I mean we even had an argument that you know yes the earth appears to be old but you know God just made it look that way which want to come in on that one you're only three years old but you look [Music] eight times in the Bible it's impossible for God to lie or to see there's no way he's gonna make something look old that in fact as young I mean I can look at you and figure out what age you are you're not three you're not 13 they're not 23 that's all obvious god never creates for the appearance of age and the whole point is we're commanded in the Bible to give credence to both the book of Scripture and the book of nature both are God's in Eric revelation to us what's what's fascinating to me is when you read his book on the book of Job the I think the thing that we don't really think through his job was written before the Bible right well notice in job that the sacrifices are being done by the patriarchs not by priests so predates the Mosaic Aaron there are no nations there are only city-states so predates the formation of nations also you notice the book of Job is almost entirely written in poetry and if you know Hebrew it's a poetry that's designed to be easily memorized word for word Hebrew did not become a written language until the time of Moses and so the way scripture would have to be preserved before Hebrew became a written language was through word-for-word memorization but that's the one book of the Bible that's designed to be easily memorized word-for-word and I think the prophet Elijah probably had a lot to do with it when I read Jobe a lie who is quiet until chapter 32 why is he quiet for 32 chapters he's memorizing the debate that's going on between Joel and his three friends now none of us in America would ever do that we don't have the skills for doing that we don't need to we've got computers and smartphones and remember everything for us but I've been to rural Africa three times in ministry they had a capacity to memorize that is way beyond any thus in the advance West but the in so the insights that these guys have about God is all from the book of nature it's all from it's just all from observations I engage Caltech scientists often I remind them that yes you got a PhD for in the world's leading institutions here at the top university but in some respects you're more ignorant about science than Joel was 4,000 years ago Wow now that shocked some but I say you know what job had intimate contact with wild birds and wild mammals and be read chapter 12 but jovi says look to the birds they'll instruct you look to the beasts of the field they will teach you and when he meant was they'll teach you deep spiritual lessons he says notice these animals are designed to come to us and relate to us and serve and please us and we are a higher species like wise weak humans were designed to come to God to relate to him and serve and please him and just like our sin causes these animals to run away from us instead of their natural instinct to come towards us likewise our sin caused us to run away from God instead of towards him but I love the way the book of Job ends job says you've been able to tame all these birds and mammals even the really difficult ones like the hippopotamus but he says there's one species of life you can't tame you cannot bring humility to a proud human being just like it takes a higher being to tame these animals it takes a higher being to tame a human being he says job came to me for the humility lat the three of you did not and so he has a job pray for them that they would humble themselves before God and receive what they need and that's just a few of the lessons we gain from the animals one of my favorite ones is if you bond very strongly to one of these bird or mammals like you do with a pet you'll notice it's able to outperform its wild peers likewise a war bond at or 380 our capacities intellectually physically and personally are greatly magnified over people who don't have that a bond I don't know about you but I experience it see that again that is so profound so an animal will outperform other animals by their association with us the same is true of our relationship well like for example Ravens are very smart they're the smartest of the non-human animals but when they're emotionally bonded to a human being their intellectual capacity goes up it only happens when they're emotionally bonded to a human being likewise that we commit ourselves to Jesus Christ and develop that strong emotional bond with him you will see your capabilities I greatly enhanced what happened we could all raise our hand on that one couldn't we that's amazing that's amazing insight while it explains why for example we see a rise in atheism today because we have an increasing percentage of our population that's cut off from the lessons of these wild birds and wild mammals but what I did with my son's I said look I'm gonna go come with me we're gonna go to a wild place in British Columbia where humans have not been in 50 years I want you to see how the animals respond when they've not been abused by human beings and it's amazing they come right up to you they want contact with you they actually want you to touch them they'll land on your head yeah that really happens gosh so but it only happens where they've never been abused by humans yeah all right somehow weed rips it away from young earth older and the reason I'm harping on this is because I think this is a hurdle that that I want us to be able to to get beyond because your entire ministry reasons to believe is is built on the fact that you don't have to close your eyes to science or the latest stuff that's happening this is the ally it's not the enemy it's the ally and we need to take advantage God has given us especially in the 21st century when so many new discoveries are being made like on my Twitter page I post an average of three tweets a day they give you a link to a scientific research paper that gives more evidence for the Christian faith by the time I could post 10 a day that's how many kinds of scientific discoveries are happening and literally that's on your website right I mean you guys are underpaid you go to you Ross Twitter you'll get that you get there and I always give you a link to the papers so you can read it for yourself you were telling us today that that there are two major reasons that the youth of our churches are not are falling away or whatever we talked about and one was the lack of science and it's the science faith issues it's the number one reason why young people leave the church number two no ability to ask questions and that's what I love about your church you allow people to ask questions one day I can share with you my experience working with churches across the country every Church I know of that as an open mic Q&A after the message is a church that's growing by adult converse non-christians will come if they know that they can hit you with any question they want and you don't to do it by yourself I tell pastors look get a panel up front and it's okay to tell people look I don't have a good answer I don't know but I'll research it for you guys incredible and sometimes I challenge the non-christian to research the question and even bring them up on the stage and get the answer you've even you've even offered to you know after you're gone to to have a panel with some of our our folks on what Skype or something sure to just do you know if you've got because I don't know about you guys but it takes me a while to process some of this I go in an all-night thing what does you know what about this but now what I was suggesting if there's a particular issue where you got say 15 or 20 people that are struggling they're struggling with this I'm more than happy to set up a Skype meeting or a zoom meeting the awesome and that way doing for travel here I can do it right from my office the awesome well okay so to to give you guys time I told you this was gonna happen you're good right now all right so so what time what are we shooting for well let's just do it right now it's a 707 so we're gonna go ahead and if you have kids and grace kids I need to dismiss and allow you to go get them we're gonna continue on with QA and we're also gonna have these mics right in here we have Phil over here and Butch right here there's two mics and these these two big aisles so if you have questions we have the text questions we have several coming in but if you have a question that you would like to ask two you can go right up and stand by Phil or by butch and we're gonna kind of share all of the questions that we're gonna target dr. Ross with all right so keep it out of the UFO camp because I want to talk to him about that tomorrow is that the 11:00 tomorrow we're gonna dominate yes because I've read most of his books and and oh my goodness there's just so many things don't want you to touch on that and I know you know you guys are getting bombarded with so yeah take it away just jump right down to Phil and will go Phil Butch and then I'll jump in one and Ron anytime to you jump in as well yeah hello dr. Ross I know some friends on line would be a little jealous me being here or what happened but real quick I think you should go on the Joe Rogan podcast and I also think you should have a conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson I think I would be really good but you can make that happen I'll be I'm more than happy to do it but my question is what is ontology could you but that in a simplified term could you explain metaphysics in a simplified term and then being because I understand being is nothing but what is being itself so okay I didn't get that last part I'll put the microphone closer being the state of being so the opposite of being is nothingness what exactly is being exists as I guess okay and if I'm not going the right direction let me know but there's a number of theoretical physicists that are making the claim that the whole universe that all of us human beings came out of nothing nothing produced something probably the most famous was the physicist Lawrence Krauss he wrote a book the universe for nothing and I read that book and the church had me give a message everything you want to know about nothing and so what I talked about is how these physicists trying to avoid God are basically coming up with these exotic definitions of nothing every one of their definitions of nothing is something so they'll be saying things well like physics tells us we can get virtual particles from quantum space-time fluctuations a quantum space-time fluctuations are not nothing just like you can take matter and make energy and turn energy into matter you can take quantum space-time fluctuations and turn that into matter however it is subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which means the more matter you virtually bring into existence from the quantum space-time fluctuations a faster must return to those quantum space-time fluctuations for something as massive as a universe that returned time is less than well it's point zero zero zero with a hundred and twenty zeros between the disappoint in the one seconds and we have lots of evidence of universes older than that very tiny split-second therefore that's not how the universe came into existence you can find two articles on our website at reasons org where I critique Lawrence Krauss his book it's a two-part series where I get into all of his different parts of nothing and in terms of ontology and being that's really what that's all about it's about how do we determine that something is actually real how do we determine a subset of that how to determine that is physical a side part of that debate is is everything that's real physical or is there's a reality beyond physicality and in Christianity it's based on the idea that we humans are dual there's something about us that's physical but there's something about us that's non physical and so the spirit and a soul that resides within us and I kind of look at our human bodies as similar to your automobile if your automobiles in the parking lot it's not doing anything but if you get behind the wheel turn the ignition put your hands behind the steering wheel hit the ignition you can make the car do things likewise the soul and spirit within us can take control of our physical body and make it do things and when the physical body is no longer functional the soul and spirit continue to exist God created two kinds of life forms that are eternal angels and human beings and so all of us human beings will continue to live beyond a time when our bodies no longer operate but just like when your car is no longer functional you can go out and buy a new car God promises a time will come well we'll get a new body but as a body that will never suffer decay you won't have to worry about gravity causing your chin to go down that's not gonna happen electromagnetism is not gonna cause decay in your body the new creation there is no electromagnetism there is no thermodynamics there is no gravity why because God uses gravity thermodynamics electromagnetism has fine-tuned tools in his hands to eradicate evil and suffering once and for all the moment that that is eradicated God takes us from this creation into a brand-new creation with different laws of physics you want to read about what those laws of physics are like why the universe is the way it is and this is a little bit off-topic but the timing is perfect here I know you talk in light years and millions of years and think again and put the microphone closer to your mouth not used to just talking into it but so I looked up PBS last week and I know I grew up with aging dating things with bc-ad bunches everybody has I'm sure but they were attempting to date Scrolls and it caught my attention they mentioned BCE and CE II years and I was just taken aback by what that even meant I had to look it up and that they were talking terms of before Common Era and Common Era and when I googled it it was you know an attempt to remove Christ from dating essentially right and I'm just wondering how prolific is this or I don't remember any big debate over how this should be done you know well for what is worth see E is identical to AD there's no difference agree yeah I understand that they're just changing the terminology so they don't have to reference Jesus Christ they call it before the Common Era but what started the Common Era was the Ministry of Jesus Christ that's what I thought was so amazing that even though they're trying to distance the Jesus aspect of it they still need a point where they have to have a stake in time to measure from and it's but in terms of dating may have Bible manuscripts the techniques of advanced to a point where for some manuscripts we can date them to plus or minus nine months so the dating is getting to be really good in terms of establish that supportin because we've been able to find in the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts of virtually every book in the Bible these fragments every book of the Old Testament that date back to the second century see that's important because you've got books like Daniel that's predicting historical events way beyond the second century BC so it's proving that the Bible's got predictive power and has got predictive power it didn't just come from a human source it had to come from someone that knows the future I want to go right right here you this I think came from somebody here in the audience or online I can't tell but you reference the book of Acts and when you were telling your story this is like the book of Acts and then miracles but what about those that believe or the argument that miracles ended with the book of Acts and it's no longer for today how would you address that well I'm somewhat sympathetic because you've got certain denominations that claim that the first Corinthians 12 gifts the nine gifts that are listed there are gifts that every Christian should be experiencing but if you read that text carefully these are supernatural gifts that I believe are in operation today but for the purpose of dealing with supernatural barriers to the spreading of the gospel and so I'm somewhat sympathetic to people saying well you know these gifts of healing how do you build it into a church that supposedly has no supernatural barriers to the gospel and there's been number of papers written by both Christians and non-christians pointing out that these are all fraudulent these claims however I've been on the mission field and has seen those first Corinthians 12 gifts actually being expressed I've seen them right before but an only happens where you got supernatural demonic things going on suppressing the spread of the gospel so there's not demons filling your church on Sunday morning you shouldn't expect those kinds of gifts to be in operation but if you're out there on the mission field or say if you're in some kind of witchcraft cabin don't be surprised and basically God is doing he's showing people trapped by demonic oppression that there's a greater power there than what the demons are able to express but my interpretation is those first Corinthians 12 gifts are limited to dealing with supernatural barriers to the spreading of the gospel and what you see in Romans 12 and 1st Peter for our gifts designed to motivate us to minister I think those have always been in effect and my response to people who think the book of Acts is clothes put it to a scientific test I mean just try this and see what happens that was my challenge tonight if you don't believe this put it into practice your life and watch what God does that's how you convince the skeptics I'm a scientist always tell people put it to the test and see what happens hi doctor I wanted to find out you had mentioned anger with atheists I have a situation right now where I don't even know how much eye information I want to divulge but my son was screamed at for mentioning Jesus and God because he does not believe but he's terminal I have yet my heart breaks for him I don't want to anger and turn him away to where he won't come and see my son do you have something short that could be said well I have the experience frequently at having to debate angry atheists and where I see anger whether it be a public figure or just a stranger I've just met if there's anger there there's pain and there's hurt and so if I have the opportunity I say you know what we could talk about the theology we could talk about the science but before we go there can I hear your story first please tell me because I can tell there's pain in your heart just tell me about the wound that experience and it's importantly show compassion rather than critique their story just listen and try to understand the source of their pain you know to give you a quick story I once did a debate in front of 700 atheists at Caltech at the International skeptic Society conference and afterwards I began to privately engage the atheists in the audience and I said what I've noticed this weekend is how passionate all of you are about the non-existence of God if you really believed that God didn't exist you'd be treating him like the tooth fairy your passion tells me you really do believe God exists but you don't like them the response I got from these atheists almost to a man and a woman was this it's not that we hate God it's that we despise as followers and each one of them began to tell me a story of how they had been wounded by a Christian or someone who called themselves a Christian in their past life and you're just listening to their story opens up an opportunity not to talk and sometimes it works in Reverse sometimes they say look they want me to deal with her intellectual issues but often the intellectual stuff is a smokescreen to hide the real reason why they're rejecting God and so again now listen to the story show compassion and see if God's Holy Spirit revealed to you the real reason why they're rejecting God and it takes time I had an atheist come to my class on Sunday morning and it took 6 months before he was willing to talk college for me the real reason why he was rejecting God but it was just being patient and listening and not using anger in response to the anger not being provoked that eventually drew that story out and for some people they're willing to tell you the story right away others it's gonna take time and maybe you can get some people to come around you I mean in case of your son who else has a close relationship with them that might be able to break through dr. Ross I was wondering if you could put a number on the age of the earth and were humans supposed to human beings what how long have they been here and was the animals before the humans are after the humans okay good questions in terms of the age of the earth scientists now have a very accurate date there's about 20 different methods we can use to measure the age of the earth but the date you'll see in the published literature 4.5 6 6 2 billion years plus or minus point zero zero zero 1 billion so it's really knowing the very high precision ants mainly because of looking at lead isotopes and the Iranian 232 uranium 238 and 235 we get such a highly accurate date but it's not just radiometric dating there's other tools we use as well as far as human beings the best scientific date comes from mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA but it's not that accurate ten years ago they thought it was accurate but they now realize it's not as accurate as they once thought the best date we have is a hundred and fifty thousand years ago plus or minus 150 thousand years now because of that plus or minus 150 thousand years and the popular literature they'll say humans date back three hundred thousand years they're taking the very edge of the air bar but it could be zero now I would argue the Bible gives us a more accurate date and it comes from Genesis chapter 2 Genesis chapter 2 tells us God created Adam and Eve and put them in a garden but the text names for knowing rivers that come together in the novena the tigris and euphrates which are still flowing today and the jihad and the pichon which stopped flowing quite a while ago the four rivers come together in the garden today that location is more than 200 feet below sea level but during the last ice age it was more than 80 feet above sea level which tells us that God created Adam and Eve some time during the last ice age what's the date for the last ice age fifteen thousand to a hundred and thirty thousand years ago you say well that's not very accurate it's more accurate than the scientific date and I think another way you can kind of get some clue is that the earliest archaeological evidences we have for human activity is in the Persian Gulf in East Africa which suggests and is just a suggestion that the origin of humanity was at a time when there is an easy migration route between the Persian Gulf and East Africa and there are three dates during the last ice age where we had such an easy migration route one was about fifty five thousand years ago another one seventy three thousand another one on a hundred and seventeen thousand but again that's a suggestion that's not pinned down are we ever gonna get a better date while in reading the literature on genetic dating of human origins I think the date we have today is the best date will ever get you say well isn't there a radiometric date the only radiometric date we have that gives us a date without assumptions as carbon-14 and that tells us that humans have been here for forty thousand years but once you get past forty thousand years carbon-14 is not helpful so somewhere between forty thousand and a hundred and thirty thousand years ago now we also have evidence they have written about an improbable planet pointing out that we now have archaeological evidence that tells us that humans living during the last ice age were involved in planting grains harvesting the grains roasting the grains grinding the grains of making bakery products this is a new breakthrough basically demonstrating that the first humans were just as technologically motivated as we are today but what they didn't have that we have as they did not have climate stability they were living at a time when the global mean temperature was jumping up and down by about 15 degrees centigrade which prevented upscaling industrial activity everything was on a very small scale and virtually the whole human population was engaged in trying to come up with food whereas today in America only 1% of us have to be engaged in providing food for the rest of us which means 99% of us get to do music art literature science engineering computer coding technology that's the reason why we see such dramatic technological advance but we're no different than the people living during the last ice age it's wrong to think that they were not as advanced as we are they were just as advanced as we are but they didn't have the claim of stability what about Neanderthals animals animals ok the animals creation day 5 talks about God creating the first animals you know let the Seas swarm with these sea creatures well we know scientific you'll actually see this in the DVD we're giving away how the oxygen jumped rapidly from less than 1% to 8% that happened 575 million years ago and what we see as you go from nothing but microbes and colonies of microbes to immediately you got animals as big as 2 meters across no time delay no evolutionary history they appear suddenly and appeared exactly the same time that the oxygen jumps up to a percent that's a minimum amount of oxygen that an animal needs to survive and then we have the avilon animals going extinct and the oxygen then jumps up to 10% and again as an immediate jump from 8 to 10% and as soon as it's 10% immediately you got the Cambrian animals these are animals with digestive tracts circuit Ori systems eyes and brains and what we see is every possible I design shows up all at the same time as Richard Dawkins the atheist paleontologists has written in his book these animals come out of nowhere with no evolutionary history they just suddenly appear it's one of the most profound challenges to an evolutionary paradigm animals came before the humans and when the oxygen went from 10% to 20% that's when you got birds and mammals but at each point you get the animals the instant conditions allow them to exist there is no gradual evolutionary history they show up immediately and they show up in great diversity thank you dr. Ross I got a question here and also I'm just gonna go ahead and cap the lines of no one else coming up and getting the lines we'll keep the lines here but just for the sake of time okay I have a question about sharing your faith with Muslims or Hindus Buddhists those that have you know strong faith in those religions but I'm I want to share my faith with them what separates them religions from Christianity how would you go about that well that was part of my story is that I was not raised in a Christian home and but my studies in astronomy convinced me that the universe had a beginning and so I began to search for the beginner first place I looked for him was in the writings of the philosophers that was quite disappointing and then I looked at the holy books and religions of the world but what I discovered after two years study is how different the Bible was than these other books he read the other books they have this air of intellectual superiority about him and there's a mysticism there and I think what really surprised me is just how vague they were and how repetitious they were when I picked up the Bible it was loaded with content on physics geography history science very specific written directly there was none of this air of esoteric poetry that was all missing so just it's dramatically different when you compare them and I think what specially struck me was the other religions talked about creation in a way that fits within what we can imagine within length width height and time which told me that looks like something that shows limitations a human visualization when I picked at the Bible it talked about God being a triune being something that you can't explain in length width height and time talked about how God gives all of us humans a free choice and yet it says he pre determines everything we think everything we do and everything we say divine predestination simultaneously operating with human free choice you're not gonna make that work and for space-time dimensions but I've written a book beyond the cosmos where I show you multiple ways it works if you allow God to move and operate in the equivalent of three independent time dimensions and keep in mind the space-time theorems prove God can create any number of space-time theorems that he chooses he's not limited by space and time so it showed me that the Bible is the only holy book that had the signature of coming from a nonhuman source it transcended the limitations of human visualization or over everything it said about the future was correct I noticed that all these holy books try to predict future historical events and future science but only the Bible doesn't without error and the bible does it hundreds of times not just two or three times so a dramatic difference but I notice a lot of people that I engage that are Hindus or Buddhists or loose limbs they've never compared the books so I challenge them to at least look at the books so fatigue factor how are you all doing you go ten more minutes really all right no nobody's tying you down to that chair I just want you to know that but I literally could go all night listen thank you professor Ross for coming to Gracie my question is in the Bible we're told that angels left heaven and came to earth and had togetherness with human human beings and their offspring were large do you think that God created specifically the flood to eliminate these offsprings and those who were doing that to keep his creation normal or whatever yeah you're referring to the first few verses of Genesis chapter 6 where it talks about the sons of God coming down and having intercourse with the daughters of women and giving rise to the Nephilim these you know super tall humans are running around and there's been a debate over who these sons of God are I've devoted a whole chapter of navigating Genesis to your very question plus an appendix but what I put in the appendix is this okay sons of God can mean either angels or humans let's actually do a word study so I basically give you all the passages in the Bible that use the term sons of God or children of God and contrast it with sons of men and children of men I also give you all the passages where Jesus refers to himself as a son of man and then the son of God and here's what you discover the only time humans are referred to as sons of God is when they have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and therefore not until acts chapter 2 does any follower of Jesus become a son of God this is when the Holy Spirit comes down in the day of Pentecost and if you actually read through the book of Acts there's three days of Pentecost one for the Jews chapter two one for the Samaritans chapter eight one for the Gentiles chapter ten once you get past chapter ten followers of God are only referred to as sons of God never as sons of men only sons of God however the sons of God in Genesis 6 is before the day of Pentecost and therefore scholars have argued that can't be referring to human beings unless the human beings are being taken over by angels so those are kind of the two theories running around today that these are actual angels that come down and have intercourse with women or they're demon-possessed men that have intercourse with women and but they give rise to these in the Fela and what you notice about the Mithila I also give you all the passages on in the filum they're only men there's no mention of femaleness Elam the shortest Nephilim was Goliath at a minimum height of 9 foot 9 we got the king of Bashan who comes in at above 12 feet minimum height so they were tall and I have a little thing in the book called the physics of basketball basically making the point that basketball is a sport where the probability of you sinking a basket assuming you got equal skill goes up with a square of your height which means a seven-foot basketball player will sink twice as many baskets as a 5-foot tall basketball player however one of the things we notice in basketball but tallest basketball players are not the best basketball players why because once they get past about six foot seven increasing height means you lose more and you know in Los Angeles a decade ago we had the Lakers with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal and if you remember in him they didn't get along well the reason they didn't get along Kobe had to wait for Shaquille O'Neal the lumber down the court it took him all quite a while to get down the court and then Kobe had to sit there and wait and then give him the basket so he could sink a basket I mean Shaquille O'Neal had a high percentage of baskets if he got the basketball but he wasn't as mobile as the players are only six foot six or six foot seven and studies have been done where people have a growth hormone defect which means their bodies keep growing they don't stop growing none of them live past the age of 39 they all die when they hit about 8 foot 10 or 8 foot 11 and the problem is that as your height goes up the body mass has to go up by the Jazz Square in order to maintain and explains why there's a loss of mobility but here's what we see about Goliath he was at least 9 foot 9 inches tall and the text tells us he took 250 pounds of weapons and armor into battle and he was an effective soldier which means there's something supernatural about these Nephilim because there's no way if they were just like us human beings they could function at that height they wouldn't be able to fight in battle at all and yet they were we also noticed that they had certain birth defects 6 toes and 6 fingers and so there's something genetically odd about them and what you see in Jude chapter 6 it talks about certain demons that left their estate and how they're now bound up in the abyss and if you read me think about the abyss about Jesus when he would cast out demons what are the demons say to him don't send us to the abyss they were basically appealing that Jesus and say yes we are demons but we're not that bad we don't deserve Dakota v of this if this is not a pleasant place but when it says that they left their estate in the Greek that's a phrase for someone who's committed bestiality and therefore that is give some credence for people saying these are actual angels that had intercourse with people individuals are not part of their species now there's no pushback with that where people say look at all the Texas say the angels do not marry however there are no Bible Texas say they cannot marry they're commanded not to marry and so that's kind of the range of options out there how I write my book is I say these are the range of options you get to choose where you want to land but I do encourage you at least read the scripture passages so you get an idea of what the whole of the Bible says on this issue as to the issue that's being promoted by a number of Bible teachers on TV and radio who are claiming the Nephilim right here I don't think so David's mighty men killed off the last of the Nephilim I mean and yes you're right the flood was partly designed to eliminate than the filum but what does the text say in Genesis 6 6 4 they came back so it means that the sons of God returned after the flood and did the same thing again and therefore as important for God to raise up Moses and later David and David's mighty men to eliminate the last other than the filum okay hi thank you for being here tonight this is and think about this for a long time and read a lot about it they say that time is speeding up and it says that we're feeling like we have 16 hour days so time keeps speeding up what's gonna happen okay I didn't quite get that some of those casinos they say time is speeding up and it feels like 16 hour days now okay well actually our days are getting slightly longer because the earth is slowly spinning down so for example how physicists celebrate New Year's Day we adjust our clocks by a few microseconds that's so much so and if you wait another 100 million years you will have a 25 hour day but and there was a time when our planet had only a three hour day because of its gravitational interaction with the Sun and the moon Earth's rotation rate has been slowing down throughout its history what's the optimal rotation rate for human beings in human civilization 24 hours there's a reason why God treated us when he did this is the optimal time for us human beings to live and thrive when we get to 25 hour days it's gonna be much hotter at 2:00 p.m. than it is now and much colder at 2:00 a.m. than it is now and so we got the optimal time no as you get older I think time tends to go by more rapidly I mean you know there's one of the scientists at reasons of leave is older than I am and he says life is like a roll of toilet paper the closer you get to the end the faster it disappears saying you know that had to do lightning and stuff I can't quite pick up they say has to do with lightning and stuff like that lightning mm-hmm yeah Lightning has no effect okay well there was something on the internet where they talked about how there was an object that you know an asteroid that came close to the earth and that asteroid actually affected our rotation a little bit and actually worked to slow down a rotation rate but the amount of slowed it down by was like a train Thor the second so it's really wasn't significant so we're still there are there things that can slow down the rotation rate but the most significant thing of all is a tidal interaction with the moon that is the biggest factor so we're still having the same amount of time in the day the same amount of time we're not getting you know sharks changed here yeah I mean a few microseconds per year isn't gonna make much difference in your calendar we'll do one two and then we'll call it how do you think the dinosaurs went extinct like why didn't they go on the ark okay the dinosaurs you will not find dinosaurs mentioned anywhere in the Bible the Bible gives us the highlights of creation so it does leave a lot out dinosaurs fit in between the beginning of creation day five and the end of creation day five creation day five mentions God creating the first animals and then God creating birds and mammals the dinosaurs fit in between and there are three different generations of dinosaurs at Triassic dinosaurs the Jurassic dinosaurs and the Cretaceous dinosaurs they lived at a time when the earth had huge shallow seas that's crucial because the only way you can have an animal more massive and taller than an elephant as if there's water to support provide buoyancy support for the animal but there was a time for example in half of North America and large parts of Asia and Africa and South America recovered by the shallow seas seas that were between ten and thirty feet deep and that's the era of the dinosaurs that's when the dinosaurs proliferating and it's based on a principle in see in Psalm 104 Psalm 104 tells us that God packs earth with as much life as possible and as diverse as possible for as long as possible so when the environment changes God will change the kinds of life forms that are here in the earth now each of those three generations were wiped out by asteroid collisions that ignited volcanic eruptions all over the world the most recent event was the one that wiped out the Cretaceous dinosaurs that happened 66 million years ago they've actually dimmed that date down to four places as a decimal now so it means that the dinosaurs were long gone before human beings were created by God however we need those dinosaurs because the entire history of life on planet Earth provides us with a bio deposits we need to sustain our civilization I mean there is 78 quadrillion tons of bio deposits in the crust of the earth and that's because God has packed the planet whether as much life as possible as diverse as possible and as long as possible so I'd explains why he got so much oil and coal and natural gas and limestone and marble and gypsum that's all there because of the millions of years of life the impact on the earth of the greatest possible density and they're able to reap that to launch civilization develop this technology for billions of people can hear and receive the gospel message were the beneficiaries of all that life that preceded us one more okay yes is that a quick question I did a brief read gonna begin another book could you give a quick explanation definition of Kabbalah and does it have a place in life of a Christian I didn't hear that last part but Kabbalah I'm pronouncing it right have a lot Kabbalah Kabbalah Kabbalah or the Kabbalah Kabbalah Kabbalah okay I got that well you can go online and you'll see that trying to think of the fellas new yesh Schroeder dr. Gerald Schroeder is a caballes he's a Jewish scholar of physicists and his theology as he believes that the Old Testament is inspired by God the Talmud is inspired by God and the Kabbalah is inspired by God and so he's written a number of books and I had an opportunity to share the platform with him at Texas A&M University were the two of us were engaging atheist physicists and astronomers where I think he's done his greatest contribution his documenting how Jewish theologians living eight hundred nine hundred eleven hundred years ago in reading the Tanakh the Old Testament discerned that it was teaching Big Bang cosmology that it was teaching that there's a space-time beginning to the universe that the universe expands from this space-time beginning under laws of physics that don't change or one of those laws is a pervasive law decay but if you look at the Kabbalah it's filled with numerology it's very mystical and basically gerald has tried to pull that numerology out of the Kabbalah and integrate it with Genesis 1 and if you read his books you notice he has to keep adjusting his numbers and I had dinner with him where he said I can make all the numbers fit I said yeah but look at the gymnastics you got to go to and he says yeah and I still can't make any work his caballes treatment basically has Adam and Eve being created half a billion years ago he says well we all know that's not correct Adam and Eve is much more recent than that but my critique of it is okay there is good textual evidence that proves that the Tanakh indeed is the inspired inerrant Word of God we don't have that for the Talmud and we certainly don't have that for the Kabbalah in fact there's plenty of things in the Kabbalah we know must be incorrect and so I'm not a caballes but many Jewish scholars are caballes just like a lot of Jews think the Talmud is on an equal footing with the Old Testament but my opinion the Old Testament and the New Testament standalone has been the inspired inerrant Word of God it would figure wouldn't it that he is actually dinner with this guy you know any question we seem to ask dr. Ross is like wow man look at you people you stuck with us for almost two hours now let's just stand and we're in the morning guys he is gonna hit some of the latest stuff that has come out that will blow your mind all right don't forget the resources two guys right outside our corner right out there get out there some other team is out there so literally just thank you for this download tonight help us process it even in our dreams tonight we just pray your blessing on dr. Ross keep us all well in Jesus name Amen amen let's see you guys

Channel: Grace Church St. Louis

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Published: Sun Nov 17 2019