Space, Time, and How New Scientific Discoveries Prove the Presence of God (Plus Q&A)

welcome we're really glad you're here and we were excited to have dr. Hugh Ross with us today dr. Ross is a graduate from with his PhD from University of Toronto he has written 17 books 1719 he corrected me this morning 19,000 as far as I'm concerned 19 books and a lot of those are available for purchase here for those of you in the room but you can purchase just about all those on Amazon or his website of the organization he leads reasons to believe and the website is reasons dot org and that is a great website full of great tools for you to explore the Christian faith or defend the Christian faith depending on which side you are on but he is gonna give a lecture then we're gonna do some live Q&A so would you join me in welcoming dr. Hugh Ross [Applause] well I'm the founder of reasons to believe we founded it back in 1985 and we're involved in social media we have a totally dedicated YouTube channel where you can watch thousands of video clips and debates and also every one of our scientists and theologians has a Facebook and Twitter page where we feel questions if you don't get to ask your question today you you have that opportunity later if you're like me you think you've your best question three hours after the event is over and you can also engage us by simply going to reasons org slash the last name of our scholar you're interested in so if you go to reasons org slash Ross that's your gateway to get free chapters of all the books I've written so if you want to get a little sample you can go there and the chapter we're giving away and beyond the cosmos is chapter 13 where we look at how you resolve divine predestination with human free will and also there's this card that's available that you can fill out and when you do that you'll get this free DVD out there from our team and it's a DVD where I tell my story of how astronomy brought me to faith in Christ years before I already got to know Christians and also fielding questions from skeptics so you can get that but I've been asked this afternoon to address the topic what up astronomers and physicists learned about what exists outside the universe I mean we talked a little bit this morning about what we can learn about the universe but what about what we can learn beyond the universe or another title I could get to the talk as God's trans dimensionality our recent discoveries in astronomy reveal the glory and the power of God beyond the space-time dimensions of this universe and to put this in context I like to begin with a quote from China's most famous scientists Fong Lee Jean he's an astrophysicist but probably better known for being one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square protests and he's been a lifelong eight yes he passed away recently but during his life he wrote a book creation of the universe in which he said this a question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research in physics and we're talking about this morning how we have these two books the book of nature and the book of Scripture and so today we're living at a time when you can really see how these two books are coming together what we're learning from nature and we're learning from the book of theology the book of Scripture now I was reading the Bible in my late teenage years at the same time that physicists and South Africa and Britain were developing the first of the space-time theorems if you're interested I got a bunch of those theorems in my briefcase that you can look at especially if you're fans of beautiful equations I think you're going to eat this stuff right up but the latest of these space-time theorems makes this point that proves that any universe that expands on average and we live in an expanding universe and what these three physicists determined was only in a universe that expands throughout its history has the possibility of hosting physical life any universe that expands on average has a beginning which implies there must be a causal agent outside of space and time that creates space time matter and energy now this is important because of the gods of the non biblical religions claim that god or gods create within space and time the Bible stands alone in saying that God creates independent a space in time the space and time don't exist until God creates the universe so these theorems are important and as it makes a distinction between what the Bible teaches and what you get saved from the Eastern religions and one of the three authors of this theorem wrote in a book a year and a half later Alexander Vilenkin not a believer but he said this in his book quote with the proof now in place cosmologists could no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe there is no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning and the problem he was addressing is that there has to be a god beyond space and time to explain this beginning of space time matter and energy a God beyond space and time is responsible for creating the universe and I just want to share this with you many of my peers refer to themselves as atheists or agnostics vanya prescient they're really Diaz they believe that was a causal agent beyond space and time that created everything they just don't use a g.od word in fact I gave a lecture once of one of the NASA research facilities and the director said we're not going to let you use the word god I said well it's okay if I talk about the causal age and the transcend space and time that created everything so yeah that's fine you can do that so I got to defying God every time I mentioned it but you know long before physicists discovered these space-time theorems that proved that this agent must exist the Bible said it first in fact I noticed when no matter where I travel in the world they may not know anything about the Gospel of John or the book of Romans but everybody seems to know the first sentence of the Bible in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth now often people who are reading it in English think this is claiming that God created the universe and the earth at the same time we actually look through the whole of the Old Testament you'll never find the word universe Biblical Hebrew does not have a word for the universe but they got this phrase the Shammai an arrest the heavens and the earth which means the totality of physical reality it's used nine times in the Old Testament always referring to everything that exists that is physical all matter energy space and time when you go on in the New Testament it says the universe was formed at God's command so what was seen was not made of what was visible it's basically making the point the universe that we can detect matter energy space and time did not come from that which we can detect they came from beyond matter energy space and time and there's actually passages in the Bible that explicitly speak about the beginning of time fight one was featured in this morning's message 2nd Timothy 1:9 this grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time or it could go to Titus 1:2 the hope we share in Christ was given to us before the beginning of time and when I was looking at the different creation texts in the Bible there's more than two dozen chapter length or longer creation texts in the Bible what they all have in common is that they linked the doctrine of creation to the doctrine of creation and as passages like we see here in Timothy and Titus that declared that God begins his works of creation before begin zé's works a Redemption before he creates anything at all implying that everything God creates is for the purpose of delivering free will human beings from their propensity to commit sin and evil now whenever I presented these space-time theorems I'm spoken about this around the world the most common response I get after having present this evidence is all right you've shown us how science proves that there has to be a God but if God created the universe who created God how many have ever heard that question before from some person God created the universe who created God Richard Dawkins for example is very fond of making this claim well it's a category error it's a category error and that they presume that God is constrained in space and time the same way we are and what the space-time theorems are showing us there must be a God beyond time that created time and therefore we can't look I could put it this way any entity that's constrained to a single dimension of time that can't be stopped or reversed must have a beginning somewhere in that line of time some ultimate beginning that's true the universe is true of everything in the universe but it's not true of God now incidentally when my sons were very young in fact when they were about three-and-a-half they asked the same question I don't get it just from PhD physicist I get from children as well if God created the universe who created God what I'm going to show you is how I explained this to my sons when they were three and a half and basically what I did is I got this little piece of cardboard and said well we can have the universe on a timeline over here and we could have God on another timeline over here we can make this time long infinitely long but notice it never crosses or touches the timeline of our universe hence this God has no beginning and no ending and has not created a Bible is the only holy book that says that of God the other holy books don't and the Bible says it repeatedly God is no beginning no ending and he is not created and it's in two dimensions of time you can have an infinite number of timelines running in infinite number of directions now to put this in context the consistent definition we have of time and science is said dimension in which caused an effect phenomena occur where the effects follow after the causes when God created time he was a causal agent that brought into effect time which means at a minimum he's got the equivalent to move and operate in two independent dimensions of time so I kind of explained that to my boys when they're 3 and 1/2 and so oh yeah God's different from us he's got access to at least a second dimension of time then that dimension you can have as many times as you want in as many directions as you please and also help me with another question they had and that question was dad you have a spray every night how does God listen to our prayers and the prayers of everybody else it could be praying at the same time I said what of every kiddin planet Earth plays at the same time how does God pay attention to all these individual prayers and so remember we were talking about these two dimensions of time they said yeah let's look at it a different way here we are on our timeline and at this moment we've got four billion children praying to God all at the same time but God having access to another dimension at time could actually have a time line perpendicular to ours and what for us is six microseconds for him can be nearly infinite time and their first no problem for him to carve out 20 minutes of undivided attention to every child is praying to him at a particular moment and not lose track of all the prayers that gave him a strong motivation to pray fervently from that night ever onward I also shared with him that there's passages in the Bible that says that God can arbitrarily expand time or compress time you're probably familiar with Psalm 90 a day of the Lord is like a thousand years a thousand years is like a day a thousand years is like a watch in the night namely three hours in the middle of the night and what I show my book beyond the cosmos how that's only possible for a being that can operate in at least the equivalent no two independent dimensions a time but again this is unique to the Bible and now we have the space time theorems that prove that this kind of power exists in the hands of the one that created the universe now we not only have scientific evidence that the creator of the universe is not constrained a linear time but can operate in two or more or the equivalent dimensions a time we also have evidence that they're extra dimensions of space how many of you ever heard of the Large Hadron Collider days the most expensive scientific instrument ever built it exists in Switzerland and France seventeen miles of a particle accelerator and we're making discoveries that are helping us get a little closer to a unified field theory but what happened 20 years ago at Caltech is that a group of theoretical physicists there many of them friends of mine who were very committed believers and they were wrestling with this problem that when we look at quantum mechanics relativity and gravity there simply is not enough room within those three scientific disciplines for all the symmetries that come out of those disciplines to fit within length width height and time and this is what they realized there must be more than just three dimensions of space in the universe we need more geographical room to fit all these symmetries in and the first couple years they said well we figured out what the range of answers are we need at least eight dimensions of space and maybe as many as 26 and it took them another decade to realize the correct answer is there are six tiny space dimensions that accompany the three large dimensions of length width and height you say well where do these dimensions exist well I think on an analogy would be to take a piece of paper and roll it up like a scroll and you roll it up tightly enough that two-dimensional piece of paper will look to you like a line and that's where these other six dimensions reside they're wrapped up very tightly around the three big dimensions so tightly that the cross-section of the scroll measures 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of electron it's probably why you haven't noticed it recently in your day to day occupations however it's the only way we can get quantum mechanics gravity and relativity to co-exist and if those three don't coexist and there's no possibility for physical life and this is where the astronomers jumped in and said yeah I think we know how this works out we got nine dimensions of space that rapidly expand from the cosmic creation event but as universe expands it gets cooler and and when it gets cold enough that gravity separates out from the other three forces of physics six of the nine dimensions stop expanding so he got three that continued to expand we have six that are no bigger than what they were when the universe was ten to the minus 43 seconds old that's when gravity separated out so it was a wonderful union of particle physics and astrophysics but was demonstrating is as God that created universe not only as a capacity to move and operate in the equivalent of multiple dimensions of time but also many more dimensions of space than were familiar with so is not enough room exists within length width and height for all the symmetries required by quantum mechanics and gravity and relativity so where is this God well God must exist and operate both within and beyond the one time dimension and nine space dimensions of the universe and this is where the Bible and Christianity stands alone relative to the other religions of the world in Christianity we have God being simultaneously and continuously both immanent and transcendent now those are theological terms you here at seminaries I'm gonna unpack adjust for you the imminence of God is the doctrine that God moves and operates everywhere within his creation so no matter where you are God is there the transcendence of God says that God is totally free to move and operate independent of anything he created so he's able to operate from beyond space time matter and energy and yet he fills everything within his creation now you've got religions like Hinduism for example that talk about God being imminent but he's not transcendent he's constrained by what he creates and then you've got religions like Islam which say that God is transcendent but he's not imminent in Islam do we have a distant God that transcends the universe but it's not part of it but as we look at the BA you see statements like this can anyone hide in secret places so I cannot see him declares the Lord do not I fill heaven and earth in other words he exists everywhere within his creation or as we see in Psalm King David writes in Psalm 139 if I go up to the heavens you are there if I make my bed and the depths you were there if I rise on the wings of the dawn if I settle on the far side of the sea even there your hand will guide me there's nowhere we can go where God is not right there beside us and he goes on to say in that same Psalm if I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light become light around me even the darkness will not to be dark to you the night was shine light the day for Bart darkness there's no light to you here King David is making the point it's impossible to run away from God we can hide in the cave we can hide in the darkness about on the sea no matter where we go God is there and yet we've got other passages of the Bible like we see in first Kings where it says the heavens even the highest heavens cannot contain you he's beyond the heavens or what it says in the book of Job the Almighty is beyond our reach or what we see in Paul's writings in Timothy God whom no man has seen nor Kensie this is one of several New Testament texts that make the point it's impossible for us to see God or touch God and yet it says the Lord is near this is a passages repeated over a dozen times and the Psalms or as it says in the book of Acts he is not far from each one of us but this raises a conundrum how can God be untouchable and invisible totally beyond our reach and yet people excuse me physically very near to each one of us well there's a principle in mathematics that says that you cannot visualize phenomena in two actions beyond what you experience I got to see that firsthand when I took a course on complex variables at the University and the professor there was telling us how you can take a basketball and turn it inside out without making a cut or a hole in the surface of the basketball and four independent dimensions of space and he gave us a week to prove that mathematically but he also showed us a video clip where we got to see this basketball being turned inside-out and four dimensions but we only got to see it two dimensions at a time neither he nor any of us could visualize how this happens in our minds but we can all prove it mathematically that if we've got access to four dimensions this really does happen and so I've learned the hard way that in trying to communicate to audiences about what God can do and 11-plus space-time dimensions that you're better off taking them down a dimension rather than up a dimension and so to help me with these kinds of questions I've brought with me a couple that has a serious handicap I want to introduce you to mr. and mrs. flat and their handicap is they can only experience two dimensions of space all of us here can experience three they can only experience two and I'm gonna put them in their own special universe we're gonna call this flatland and here they are in flatland and when mister flat looks at his wife what does he see he doesn't see her outline he just sees a single line now if he walks carefully around his wife he gets different line segments and using his two-dimensional brain he can calculate the outline of his wife now it says in scriptures that God is closer to us than we are to one another all the time continuously yet we can't see him and we can't touch him now how I can help you visualize this I've got a third dimension they only have two I can put my hand one millimeter above mr. mrs. flat because I'm above their plane they can't see me they can't touch me and yet physically I'm closer to them than they are to one another it's like that with all of the you that are here today look how close you're sitting together to one another yet God is actually sitting closer to you than the person next to you and he does that throughout your entire life and no matter where you go if you're lost in the woods if you're down 200 feet scuba-diving God is there with you ruff on the moon God is with you he's closer to you he does it continuously throughout your whole life now I mentioned that as mr. flat walks around his wife it takes them some time to calculate the outline notice I get to see the outline immediately I don't have to calculate it having access to the third dimension I immediately see the outline but I also see something that mr. flat never sees about his wife and she doesn't see about herself he's constrained to only seeing the outline of his wife as a three-dimensional being I can look down and see the outline and everything inside as well something that neither one of them have access to well it tells us in first samuel 16:7 man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart God sees things in you that you never see in yourself or anyone else in your realm sees he knows you better than you know yourself which is why it makes sense to trust God to run your life I mean that's the heart of the Christian message we do not know what's best for ourselves because we don't understand ourselves to that degree but God does so it only makes rational sense to make God the master of her life and take direction from him because he knows better than we do who we are what we need and what we need to be doing well something else that we can do with mr. mrs. flat notice that they are limited in to seeing me and touching me the only way they can see me and touch me is if I come into their plane there was a time when we could see and touch God and that's when the second person of the Trinity the one who created the universe humbled himself lowered himself and for a season of time became a human being and lived amongst us where people could see him and touch him but notice what he said to his disciples towards the end of his ministry here on earth it's better for you that I leave then I stay yes if I stay you can see and touch me all the time but if I leave I'll take out the power I had before I humbled myself before you and with that power I can do things for you that's impossible for me to do if it remain among you it's better that I leave now using the same analogy I could poke a finger through the plane of their flatland world misses flat would come and investigate and what would she conclude she would conclude that I'm a small circle because she'd be looking at the cross-section of my finger well likewise when we see Jesus of Nazareth in his incarnation we're seeing a lowered component of who God is he wasn't just a human he was also God but he was showing us just a small cross-section of his divinity entering in to our dimensions but I could go to mr. flat the next day and this time I'm not going to put one finger through the plain I'm gonna put three fingers through the plain he comes and investigates and concludes that I'm three small circles and of course he rushes home to his wife and said I've had this revelation it's three circles not one circle she says oh no no I've had the revelation it's one circle and not three circles and so this being Saturday comes Sunday she goes to the Church of the one circle and he goes to the Church of the three circles which is exactly what a lot of human beings have done with the doctor of the Trinity they believe that God has one and only one legacy in Islam and Judaism or what you see say in the Eastern religions where they claim there's many independent gods but Christianity is unique in teaching it's three persons and one essence it's not three gods with different plans and ideas I mean it's one thing we're discovering as we speak to people who come from Hindu worldview perspective as we travel in other countries is in Hinduism they teach their these millions of gods and all of them are involved in creation but therefore they anticipate that the record of nature will be filled with incongruities and inconsistencies why because you've got many different creators involved as many different plans Christianity says yes it's three persons but this one mind one purpose one plan and one destiny that they have in mind and therefore in Christianity we anticipate and we look at science in nature it's all going to go here and be consistent because it comes from this one essence a single mind a single person's three persons and one essence but I hope you understand is what mr. and mrs. flat could not visualize in a limited perspective as how this one circle and these three circles could all be part of a single three-dimensional closed surface that makes up my hand from their limited perspective they couldn't see the resolution likewise from our limited perspective we can't see in a visual way how the doctrine of the Trinity is resolved and incidentally that was one of the features of the Bible that actually encouraged me when I was reading it for the first time I'm saying this is beyond the capacity of a mere human being to visualize but the Bible teaches it anyway this looks like a message that comes from a nonhuman source from someone who can experience the dimensions we cannot experience so it's actually had a factor in my coming to faith in Jesus Christ and I spend a lot of time and my book beyond the cosmos showing ways you can resolve human predestination or divine predestination in human free will Christianity teaches that there's a God beyond space and time that is predetermined every thought you will think every word you'll speak in every action you'll perform before he created the universe but it also teaches as he's holding you responsible for every thought you think every word you speak and act you perform he says he's even you the freedom to choose what you're gonna think speak and do the Bible teaches both now from our limited dimensional perspective this looks like an utter contradiction how can God control everything and yet claim that we are in control of our thoughts words and actions and you'll see other religions that will teach either that the God predetermines everything is what you see in Islam for example or what you see in the Eastern religions that God doesn't predetermine anything it's all human free will the Bible stands alone in teaching both in fact what I've put in my book beyond the cosmos are all the passages in the Bible that teach that we human beings have free will the freedom to choose what we think say and do and there's over 1,500 passages that do that but likewise there's virtually an equal number of passages that says that God controls everything everything's predetermined from before the creation of the universe and has actually eight verses in the Bible that teach both doctrines in the same sentence you really can't avoid the idea that the Bible teaches both many Christians have tried to look at the Bible in such a way where they claim it's predestination and not freewill or human free will and not predestination but if you actually do a thorough Bible study it teaches both claiming that both simultaneously operate but that's what's pressure on us how do we resolve this and so the chapter we're giving away for free a treasons org / Ross introduces us to you and here's a caveat or a disclaimer I'm not claiming to give you the true resolution of this paradox what I've did in that chapter is give you three different ways that could be done but I believe that God's got millions of ways of making it work I simply show you three ways it can be done basically making the point this is not a contradiction it's a resolvable paradox if we allow God to be as powerful as he is but I'll introduce you to one and I don't have time to get into the full resolution but it an idea have at least how God can for know everything as a says in Ephesians God for knows any predetermines everything that happens so here I want you to visualize a spear this is not a circle think of it as a big ball and on that big ball were going to have a line and this is actually going to be a line of time so what I want you to visualize here is three dimensions of time not three dimensions of space so we got a length of time a width of time and a height of time so here we got the three-dimensional ball and we got here is a timeline of the universe so this is a single line of time drawn on the surface of the sphere of time but we could put God at the North Pole of the sphere of time and from that North Pole perspective he can drop a perpendicular time line to some moment in the past history of the universe or say the birth of your life and he could drop a perpendicular time line to this present moment and a particular time line to what would be happening in the distant past and to notice here is at these three different points of time in our time line all can join at a single instant of time at the North Pole making the point that from one instant of time God can simultaneously know what's happening throughout the entire history of the universe think of that in a single instant of time he can experience 13.8 billion years of cosmic history or in a single moment of time he can experience everything that's happening in your entire life everything you're thinking everything you're saying and everything you're doing but of course the Bible not only claims that god foreknows it says he predetermines and so what I talk about and beyond the cosmos is how when you make a decision in your life there is your will that's an operation then in addition to that the New Testament tells us the will of God has a component and the will of God's adversary as a component and you actually have to look at the three wills operating together and you're kind of sitting on the fence you got the will of God and the will of satan balancing one another off you think you're in total control but that's not how it's going to end at the moment of your death as the Bible declares we're going to move in one direction or the other direction your freewill is a component but it's not the only component and that's all I'm gonna say because it's the longest chapter in the book and actually offered three completely different ways you can have God predetermine a every word thought in action that will happen in your entire life from before he created the universe and yet give you the freedom to choose all of your words thoughts and actions and to hold you personally responsible for all your words thoughts and actions now the reason why I think the Bible teaches us is that if we focus too much on human free will we begin to be legalistic in our behavior think it's all up to us what happens to us in her life but if we focus too much on the predestination part the divine predestination we think God's got a little under control and I'm not responsible if anything happens in my life and that leads to license the reason why I think we see this balance of about 3,000 scriptures teaching each equally as God wants us to avoid a legalistic lifestyle he also wants us to avoid a licentiousness style and it's not crucial that you totally understand this it simply crucially understand that both these doctrines are true and operate continuously and simultaneously and it's not an easy walk but it's something that I think already shows you that indeed the Bible declares that God's got this kind of power so yeah you can get that chapter a treasons org / Ross but I think the significant point is these kinds of teachings are unique to the Bible and no other holy book do you see teachings about the doctrine of God and the way God operates in our lives that are impossible for us human beings to visualize from our limited perspective of length width height and time and these are only two of the doctrines what I got in the book is several chapters that look on other doctrines of the Bible that likewise define any capacity to visualize and length width height and time the Bible is loaded with these doctrines but I argue that this actually proves that the message of this book must come from a being who moves and operates in many more dimensions than length width height and time the Bible's unique extra transdimensional doctrines and unique descriptions of extra dimensional events proves as content came from an extra transdimensional being whereas I would challenge you pick up any other holy book of any other religion of the world the doctrines are teaches every one of them is something you can visualize within the dimensions we human beings experience was there's evidence for me as a young man these books come from a mere human source they do not come from a divine source and I normally have a book on beyond the cosmos we've also produced a DVD and a DVD we produce for children and young people basically done with some of these table lessons showing you how God has his power but I want to close what I think is the most stunning transdimensional doctrine of all and it's one where I get challenged frequently by atheist scholars where they say when I read your Bible it makes a claim that Jesus spent six to nine hours on the cross paying for the sins of all human beings and doesn't her Bible teach that the penalty for human sin is eternal torment in hell and you're telling me that Jesus of Nazareth and just six to nine hours was able to suffer for the equivalent of say a hundred billion humans that have ever lived since Adam and Eve and the penalty is eternal torment for him one of them how can God this Jesus of Nazareth in just six to nine hours on the cross paid the atonement price for a hundred billion people where that atonement price is eternal torment and a level of restraint that we can't visualize today well it wasn't just a human being that was dying on the cross to pay the atonement price for all the sins that humanity is committed from Adam and Eve up to the present time in the future one of the crucial doctrines of the New Testament is a Jesus of Nazareth simultaneously and continuously was both human and divine the god man he was both human and God and consequently received many instances in the Ministry of Jesus of Nazareth where he displayed his human limitations but also many places in Scripture where we show his divine powers that he possessed with God the Father and God the spirit from before he created time so what I've done for you here is to create one visual demonstration of how Jesus and 6 to 9 hours could pay the total atonement price for every human being who ever lived I'm not saying this is the way he did it I'm just saying this one possible way it could be done again because God transcends space and time he can create as many space-time dimensions as he wants as many times as he wants or removes them any times that he wants and who says his powers and operations are constrained by space-time dimensions after all he created space and time so it tells us he's got power to move and operate completely independent of space and time but I think this is probably the easiest way to visualize how we could pay this atonement price so what I want you to think about here is a dimension of time that's comes from behind this screen and out in front of the screen so that's why I've kind of put this shadow here so this is a timeline that's coming out from the screen and this is the timeline of which we humans exist and in that timeline coming out from the screen we have Jesus on the cross he was nailed on the cross and six to nine hours later he had passed away so he only spent those few hours on the cross according to the Gospel accounts but while he is dying on the cross as God he would have Acts - a second dimension of time and so I want you to think of here Jesus is experiencing six to nine hours in our timeline but on a timeline that runs this way he could experience infinite time so in six hours of our time or nine hours of our time he could it be experiencing torment in a timeline that is infinitely long but he can also experience a third dimension of time and the third dimension of time he could be experiencing saved 100 billion infinitely long lines a time running in these two dimensions of time that we human beings have no access to and so here we have these 40 or 100 or 150 billion parallel infinitely long lines of time where Jesus is suffering on account of the sins that we have committed literally paying the entire atonement price that we human beings need for our Redemption and the whole point is we can collapse a hundred billion infinitely long lines of time where Jesus is suffering on account of our sins and we can compress all that down into just six to nine hours in our time dimension so one way Jesus in just six to nine hours of our time can pay for an eternity of torment for billions of human beings and again this is one of many many many ways Jesus could have paid the atonement price but it tells us this in Hebrews 2 3 how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation and was the author of the book of Hebrews is pointing out here is that we human beings tend to diminish what Christ did for us when he was dying on the cross they've really appreciate the depth of what he was doing and paying the ransom price that was needed for all of us would be delivered from her sin and iniquity and to become morally pure in the face of God and enter the new creation with no capacity for sin or iniquity or evil for the rest of eternity this is what it costs and if we really appreciate the magnitude what Christ paid for us in the cross how can anyone in their rational mind turn down such a magnificent offer and so this is where I think the transdimensional powers of God are effective in enabling people to realize this God we're talking about in Christianity is a very big big God so big he can solve all of your problems and so just showing people a few easy ways of explaining the power and majesty and glory of God and dimensions beyond what we can spirits in this universe I think health strife on the point if we can really appreciate the power of God and the magnitude of he offered to us as a gift how can anyone in the right mind turn sound such a great gift that's being offered to each one of us so hopefully this is a tool that you can use to share with people to persuade them there's a powerful God out there that God already loves us I mean that's one things I notice just being an astronomer as you look out in the universe everything is incredibly beautiful I mean it's just the equations of physics are gorgeously beautiful you got to look at them I mean that really blew me away that the best advice I got as an undergraduate is the right answer to your physics problems are always the most gorgeous equations look for beauty in equations but the truth is we see you beaut beauty ubiquitously and we especially see beauty and the doctrines that the Bible teaches about God and how he wants to redeem us from her sin and evil with that I want a segue to questions and the rule for the question time is you can ask any question of me on any topic however we're gonna strict you to one question at a time I don't want you coming to the microphone with four independent questions if you got four questions take four turns and no part asking me a four part question pick out four parts that's four separate turns at the microphone so okay so here's what we're gonna do with the questions we have two microphones set up at the each side of the room here I have a person who's gonna stand at each mic to help us out and if you have a question you can just go ahead and proceed to the microphone right now while people are getting in place let me tell you a couple of other or something else we want to do with this is we want to we are Church for people who don't go to church and one of the reasons we're doing this and even dr. Ross agreed to do this was because he knew we could attract some skeptics so if you are not a follower of Jesus you just tap the person on the shoulder in front of you and you get to cut in line because we are more interested in your questions no offence Christians we love you but honestly if you are not a believer we do want you to cut to the front of the line and we'll just kind of alternate and do this for a few minutes so we'll start on the same first thanks for coming thank you how would you describe your relationship with God how would I describe my relationship with God well I would describe it this way I mean I was researching the Bible in my late teens I really didn't I see thought as God as being very distant but the moment I sign my name in the back of that Gideon Bible committing my life to Jesus Christ committing to make in the most important person in my life suddenly I began to experience things I had never experienced before I mean I began to understand things in Scripture I couldn't understand before our prayer began to be more meaningful and I really felt that there was this personal relationship and that really has increased with every year that's passed by so I'll be finding myself in a tight Jam but just realizing no matter where I go God is there with me I have a friend that never leaves me or departs for me I didn't feel that as an unbeliever but as a believer I'm intensely aware that the matter of what happens he's right there beside me no matter what kind of jam I get in he's there to help me out of it and he's also there to rejoice and when really good things happen so that's probably the most significant thing I've noticed and that we got a book of there call always be ready which basically makes the point if you as a believer commit yourself to share good reasons with people who need those good reasons and can do it when compassion and gentleness and respect you'll see God doing miraculous things in your life to bring people to you that are prepared to hear and respond to those reasons and to me that's been the thing that's most convinced me that God really wants that relationship with me and he's there to help me and he's there to do miraculous things to assist me in our ministry thank you alright we'll go this thing it seems like it's a simplistic for non-scientists idea that time is just there and the three dimensions of space if they had a beginning they came into being within time but it's I think an eye-opener for many of us to realize that time also was a creative thing but now we're taking it a step farther and saying there are these additional dimensions and my question is are these dimensions an element of creation that also began or are they elements of the nature of God that has no beginning and no end the answer is yes to both namely I'll sedan that we now have [Applause] okay we can go to the next question I didn't quite hear that there's a relentless search for life and places other than Earth yes quite a bit if life is found in other places what does that say about the truth of the Bible and who God is and our role in the universe yeah the only limitation you find in the Bible on life beyond planet Earth is what you see in the book of Hebrews chapter 9 and 10 where it says Jesus Christ died one time one place for all which seems to imply the planet Earth is the only place where God has created physical intelligent beings who have a spirit that are in need of redemption from their sin and evil but that does not constrain God from creating dolphins on another planet or grass or bacteria and many of my peers in astronomy believe that there may be other planets with bacteria on it but all the evidence is telling us everywhere in the universe is hostile to animal life and particularly human life except our planet Earth and this has led to a question well then why would God be so gratuitous as to create a hundred billion trillion planets have all we needed was one to fulfill the purpose then why all these other useless planets why all these other useless galaxies and stars incidentally that's a question that people like Stephen Hawking have asked in his books but there's an answer to that and so an answer I put in the book why the universe is the way it is that the universe must be exactly the mass that it is and the size that it is just to get one planet on which animal life can exist if the universe were slightly less massive we'd only have the elements hydrogen and helium it would make it easy for you to pass through chemistry classes but you wouldn't be able to take a chemistry class on the other hand make the universe slightly more massive and then the first stars would quickly take all the primordial hydrogen and helium and converted into elements heavier than iron notice in both cases you get a universe with no carbon no oxygen and no nitrogen and that's just one of several reasons why the universe must be exactly the mass that is the size that it is the age that of it is and I could go on and on in order for us human beings to exist within the universe the entire universe has to exist to make a home for us human beings and likewise the laws of physics have to be exactly the way it is in order for us to be redeemed from her sin and our evil and dr. Ross along those lines you're talking to me about some articles that different people had written on that very question that was just Esther is there more about this on your website on your blog yeah and our website I actually commissioned a team of astronomers I was one of them where we talked about the different options you have from a Christian worldview perspective on life elsewhere in the universe basically making the point from a Christian worldview perspective few good options you could have a god that creates life and only one planet based on the principle that looks like God doesn't perform gratuitous miracles and the only needs the one planet then why have life on others but another astronomer argued well when I look at life on planet Earth it seems like God really enjoys creating I mean look at all the different animals he made and the different plants he made and all the stars and galaxies the great variety the fact that our food has all these different flavors I mean you know he could have just made all food tastes like cardboard but he didn't and just this gratuitous urgh I mean just so much extravagance in creation and from that worldview perspective they would be predicting what God's going to create life on all kinds of planets but what would be unique to Planet Earth as it we're the one planet where we have physical spiritual beings that are in need of redemption but hey it wouldn't surprise me at all if we got a bunch of planets with bacteria on it or a bunch of planets with whales on it however I've written articles making the point and this is particularly what's happening here in the Baltimore DC area you've got these astrobiologists saying follow the water we're gonna find life basically making the point we know life needs liquid water and what they've calculated is at an art galaxy alone there could be as many as 40 billion planets that are in the liquid water habitable zone that here's what they're overlooking we not only need to be in the liquid habitable zone our planet orbiting the right distance from our Sun where liquid water could possibly exist on our service simultaneously we must be in the ultraviolet habitable zone you need some ultraviolet radiation to make biochemical reactions work that are crucial for life but too much ultraviolet radiation will kill you and so there's a narrow zone where life as possible if you go to our website you notice we talk about published papers in the literature that document 13 independent habitable zones and for a planet to be truly habitable it must simultaneously reside in all 13 habitable zones now we've looked at planets all over a galaxy how about 40 100 have been discovered so far of those 40 100 we know of only one galaxy that resides in even three of those 13 zones and incidentally that one planet also resides at all 13 of those habitable zones you get three guesses as to which that planet is understandable yeah got that so there's a there's a story in the Old Testament of the Bible where Joshua prays to God and says hey god we need the Sun to stand still and it says that's what happened so that's what the question is about if you're not familiar with the story is does this mean that that's in the book of Joshua and we could ask that question so frequently that we did a two hour television special answering that question we got to record it on a DVD you can get that we cut it down from two hours to about a half hour but we also answer several other questions like could Jonah be in the belly of a whale for three days so you can get that on our website it's a DVD drawn from our TV show but here's a quick answer to that question when you actually look at this text it's written in Hebrew not in English and if you look at the Hebrew which is a discover is that it's telling us that God granted to Josh law in his army either a 24 hour approximate period of darkness or 24 hour period of light it's not talking about God changing the position of the Sun Moon and stars where I was talking about God imposing on the valley of agile and where the battle took place an extended period of darkness or an extended period of light and Hebrew scholars I've talked to that is more likely to be speaking about an extended period of darkness than it is an extended period of light and haven't been to the valley of agile and myself with my wife many years ago I think that's probably accurate because it's in the middle of the Beersheba desert and a Negev desert and it really gets blistering hot there especially in the summer time so having an extended period of darkness would provide Joshua because it tells us they fought all day and Joshua is concerned can they continue the battle so we can seal the victory and probably be more important that they be kept cool than that they'd be able to as see out the light but that's really what the text is talking about now there are ways that can be done but I would argue each way would be a miracle I mean you can impose intense darkness upon the valley of agile and in the middle of the day and but for a place like the Negev desert that would be nothing short of a miracle having grown up in coastal British Columbia I've experienced storms where the storm is so intense at noontime it's as dark as night now you can expect that to happen in a rain forest specially in northern temperate rainforest but to have it happen in the Negev desert that's nothing short of a meteorological miracle same thing true with a light there are ways you can refract light into a valley but again it's nothing short of a miracle and the same DVD we actually talk about what we think is a much more a spectacular miracle and some miracle of Hezekiah sundial and the case that has a kind of sundial the shadow the sundial went backwards by 40 minutes and this miracle was seen not only in Jerusalem it was seen in Babylon because of what happens the priests of mardukan Babylon see the same miracle and Babylon that the Jewish leaders were seeing in Jerusalem so what did they do they said well our God Marduk can't do these kinds of things this must be the real God the God of the original i'ts so I actually sent a delegation to Jerusalem to inquire of the miracle now in that case we add I have to have light being brought in to cast a shadow in two locations separated by 600 miles so in this case I think we Rudy are looking at something akin to God's Shekinah glory shining down on both locations and shifting the shadow or the sundial back so her whole point is these are miraculous events but as not God doing something like stopping the physician to Sun Moon and stars and she also asked a question about the rumor that NASA scientists have proven Joshua's long day and that rumour is built on the idea that if you've got a solar eclipse before Joshua's long day battle and solar eclipses afterwards you could see a discrepancy in time that would add up to an extra dozen hours by their darkness or light and technically that could be done you could prove the story of Joshua chapter 10 but here's the problem and the days before Joshua's battle astronomers would say a solar eclipse happen today somewhere in the Egyptian Empire that simply doesn't give you enough precision to say hey here are these hours now by the time you get to Hezekiah sundial you've got astronomers recording the location and the timing of solar eclipses to much greater accuracy the problem here is we're trying to confirm something that's not 12 or 13 hours it's only 40 minutes and what you see in the data there's one astronomer Fotheringham who wrote about this and the Monthly Notices the Royal Astronomical Society in the 1920s he came tantalizingly close to affirming the statement about the sundial at Hezekiah he actually came up with we see a discrepancy here and the solar eclipses that adds up to about 38 minutes plus or minus 10 minutes but with plus or minus 10 minutes that's way too big of an error bar to claim a proof or disproof so the bottom line is we can't scientifically prove the events of Joshua's long day or Hezekiah sundial but neither can we disprove it we simply don't have the data to do both incidentally this is a rumor that's been going on for 40 years that nasa proved both Hezekiah sundial and Joshua's long day the rumor is false that's not happening in fact NASA people asked me to do my best to dispel the rumor but it still hangs around even after 40 years hello dr. oz we thank you so much for the work you're doing the Millennials thank you the question I'm going to ask might seem like more than one question but it's only because it's multi-dimensional [Applause] while I can answer it in two time dimensions but not while I'm still alive so to start the question I'm gonna read from Romans five read verse 12 15 or 12 17 and 18 therefore just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin and in this way death came to all people but all sinned 4:17 for by the trespass of the one man death reigned through that one man how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ and it reiterates in that passage a couple times just as one man Adam Wright came to the world this is one therefore Christ so that in conjunction with Jesus's genealogy confirming an atom at the beginning of his family line the scripture definitely seems to give the message there is this one literal man Adam and if there's a literal Jesus it makes sense that there's a literal Adam right so with that being said do you believe in the one very specific literal Adam whether his name was Adam or not and if so please explain how his parents were non-human humanoid mothers and fathers not made in the image of God and also please explain how sin which is a result of his choice predates his existence and his decision therefore natural selection yeah that's really a great question and I'll grant you that it's one question and not the 15 questions that you could make it up to be how's this telling your pastor here that last Saturday we had a conference at reasons to believe and was all on human origins and we invited atheists anthropologists to come and engage we have people who are theistic evolutionists who came and joined us and so we had this research science thing I'll focus on the very questions you're asking excuse me the position we take it reasons to believe is that all human beings are descended genetically descended from one man and one woman the Adam and Eve we see in Scripture we did not come from a population we did not come from bipedal primates interbreeding with the original pair were all descended from this one man and one woman that God specially created and what happened at our conference was we had these atheists in theistic evolutionists saying oh wait a minute if we survey the genetic diversity of humans alive on planet today and trace it back in time we get one man and one woman we have to go back at least a half million years which seems to challenge what the Bible teaches about the relatively recent see of Adam and Eve but the problem is they're presuming that a particular genetics model is what is in place to get down to this population of human beings originally and our whole challenge was who's a claim that that one theoretical model accurately describes what's happening to the genetics of human beings and here's a rather simple way you can respond to the genetic diversity in human population the Bible says that Eve is the mother of us all and when God created Eve from a piece of flesh and bone from Adam's side he created her brand-new and as a female you know that when you're born you're born with all your eggs intact you don't get new eggs after you're born you're born with that and so when God created Eve she would have had all of her eggs intact and she had the capacity to live about 900 years and be reproductive for about 600 years so she would have had a lot of eggs and God could have easily made all those eggs genetically distinct in which case the genetic diversity of the human popular today is simply not a factor in this debate what is a factor we argued at this conference last Saturday as whether or not we humans are unique and whether we have properties that are possessed by no other life species here on planet Earth and so really looking at the behavior the artifacts of the bipedal primates have preceded us and compare that with the artifacts and the behavior of human beings and we argue there's an enormous difference only we human beings demonstrates symbolic capability the ability to use mathematics arithmetic and writing and language of a complex nature it's unique to human beings also unique to human beings is our inventiveness I mean what you notice with Neanderthals they were around for two hundred thousand years but their tool technology doesn't advance the erect teens were around for two million years the tools at the end are the same as the tools at the beginning with humans technology explodes and here we are in the 21st century in fact I've written on this in my book improbable planet that we actually have evidence the humans living during the last ice age had brief episodes where there were planting grains harvesting grains roasting the grains grinding the grains and turning out a variety of bakery products but all in a very small scale and it wasn't discovered in till the last two years and the problem is when you're living during an ice age you've got extreme climate instability that extreme climate instability means you got to put virtually a hundred percent of the human workforce into play to come up with enough food so they don't starve to death and these brief episodes were times where the climate stabilized just a little and enabled humans for the first time to set aside some members of their population to do something other than coming up with food and so that's when you see the first engineers and technologists and as where you see the the bakery industry today we only need one percent of our population be focused and coming to the food we need which means the other 99% of us get to do art music literature engineering technology and in this area a lot of coding that can only be done if you've got a surplus of food and that's why it's so crucial and I talked about in the second service these past nine thousand five hundred years have been the one episode in the entire history of the earth where we've had extreme climate stability but this is where you really see the uniqueness of the human behavior coming out relative of bipedal primates now you say why would God create these bipedal primates that's also part of our human origins model that God knew in advance that we would become sinners and we become sinners we would abuse the very animals that were crucial for launching civilization you see this in the book of Job chapter 38 and 39 how God created the cow the donkey the horse the goat the deer the eagle names all these different animals these are the animals have played a critical role in launching agricultural industry and gave us a surplus of food we need to launch civilization without those animals we wouldn't stuck in the Stone Age at a low population level well where did these bipedal primate slipped they lived in Africa Asia and Europe and the one thing we see in the bipedal primate fossil record is the brain size goes up and down it's not a nice linear progression like you see in the evolutionary textbooks it goes up and down and that bipedal capability also goes up and down but one thing we do see a linear progression each successive species is more dependent on large body burden mammal species for their food supply which means that these animals are given an opportunity before God creates out of an e if you see tall mammals on two feet with weapons in their hands run because what it tells us in joke God designed these birds and mammals to come to us not to run away from us to serve and please us rather than to avoid us but knowing that sin would come God created several species of his bipedal primates that basically trained these animals to run when they see tall mammals on two feet with weapons in their hands and that meant that these animals survived in Africa well here's what's interesting Africa has all but one of these bipedal primates have preceded us when humans went into Africa the extinction rate of large body burden mammal species was only 4% Australia had none of them when humans went into Australia they quickly drove to extinction 94% of the large body burden mammal species there were camels and sheep and horses on Australia but they were wiped out by the humans that came in and consequently the Aborigines remained at a low population level with only a Stone Age technology and here's what happened last Saturday at our conference our reasons to believe scholars basically were challenging the atheist in theistic evolutionists this is a complex problem that can only be solved by integrating across all the scientific disciplines you can't just look at the genetics you've got to look at the archeology you've got to look at these artifacts you've got to look at the climate that's going on you need to look what's happening to the physics of the Sun if you integrate all of this I think you should powerfully see the biblical message very quickly Romans 5:12 that's often a text of people appeal to to say death did not enter creation until Adam sinned but carefully look at Romans 5:12 it says death through sin was visited upon all people not all life only one species can experience sin that's we human beings and it says death to all people so what the text is saying is when Adam sinned that brought death to the first time upon the human race it's not saying that he brought death on plan animals that preceded Adam but Adams offense brought death to humanity for the first time and I'm glad you read honor the passage because this is the one man introduced sin we got the man Jesus that delivers us from sin one man brought it in and one man takes it all out thank you let me add on that too I read a book that I'd recommend that was kind of a debate between dr. Ross's organization and another organization and the exact title of it you'll have to help me out was it's called old Earth Creationism versus evolutionary creationism it's a book long debate between the scientists that BioLogos who take an evolutionary creationist perspective and the sciences Pettine had reasonably that holds to the view that God specially created Adam and Eve from whom are all descended and that book gets into lots of different aspects of questions surrounding your questions so I thought that was worth mentioning let's go this side okay so Karl and mosaic thank you so much for bringing dr. Ross out here and I'm only able to understand about half of the questions and 1/3 of your answers I would love to know if you could please if I understand it you came to faith in Christ by studying science I would love to hear just the one thing that was most it stands out in your mind of us I'd kind of turn the crank in your head but one thing that stood of my mind and what does the previous context come closer to the microphone thank you studied science and through that you found faith in Christ so I'm wondering what is there one thing you remember that was an aha moment for you to say hey maybe there's more to life than just this material world I see yeah it really took reading the Bible for the first time to show me that there's more to going on than just what we see in physical reality realizing this book came from a being beyond space and time and you know I had read all the other holy books about what really struck me is this book the Bible gets everything right it gets all the geography right although his three right all the science right I was particularly impressed with the creation accounts how everything is correctly described in the correct chronological sequence and you know the best I found outside of the Bible is the ANU militia the Babylonians and they get to it of 14 right the Bible gets ten for ten on the creation events and four for four on the initial conditions they said what about the other creation stories they all score zero but the ANU militia gets to it of 14 right now I chopped it up to the fact that the Babylonians weren't that far removed from the Hebrews but yeah that a bigger impression on me just seen right in the first page this is a book that's correct beyond what's possible for human beings to write and I'm just gonna go ahead and pologize we're not gonna have time to get to all the questions so hang tight but we'll go ahead and do another one from the same this is kind of different in that it's going forward in a topic that's in today's technology world general AI it's always just around the corner the check is in the mail what does a believer I believe that God can't create something greater than himself I have a hard time believing that us created in His image could create something greater than ourselves like some are saying generally I will eventually take over the human race because it'll become more intelligent and yeah a lot of it depends how you define artificial intelligence if you're talking about machines that can store more information than our brain can that's certainly possible but generalize artificial intelligence is that we're going to be able to make a machine that will manifest free will just like we human beings can they'll not only be able to you know produce the hardware they're going to be able to write the software automatically and there's actually machines that are pretty good at coming up with new code that we human beings nevertheless have to check but one of my favorite quotes coming from the artificial intelligence research group at MIT which is probably the foremost leader in the world on artificial intelligence is were 10 years away from making a truly artificially intelligent machine and always will be it's not going to happen and in my viewer to come to my office in Covina California you'll see I've got about 30 books written by non-theistic research scientists looking for an answer to the origin of consciousness every one of those books ends up by saying we don't have a clue where consciousness comes from and that's the fundamental limitation of why I think we'll never get an artificially intelligent machine as consciousness does not lie within the realm of physics and chemistry it's beyond the physics of this universe so the consciousness that we human beings have operating within us is not something that it's totally within the realm of physics and chemistry and from a Christian worldview perspective when we human beings die our consciousness leaves this universe and enters into a new realm our consciousness is not part of the physics and chemistry this universe it's independent of that and that's why we're not going to be able to use physics and chemistry to build a conscious artificially intelligent machine it's basically looking at the world from the physicalist perspective when in fact the reality the world is dualistic we are physical but we human beings are not just physical we're also spiritual and the spiritual part of us is not constrained by the space-time dimensions and the laws of physics of the universe dr. Ross let me ask a question based on that something a lot of the militant atheists will bash Christians for is believing in a God of the gaps how do you address that with Christians well I get that all the time I mean fact you can actually Google some debates I've done with atheistic scientists and they bring that up and I said well gaps are part of human reality no matter how much we learn in science there will always be things that we don't understand we call them anomalies we call them gaps and there's God of the gaps there's naturalism of the gaps and let's see what happens to the gaps on both sides are the naturalistic gaps from their worldview perspective trying to explain everything without God are those gaps getting bigger and bigger as we learn more aren't they getting more numerous are they getting more problematic if that's happening the naturalism isn't big trouble on the other hand if it's happening on our side if from a Christian worldview perspective our gaps are getting bigger and bigger and more and more numerous and more and more problematic and there's something seriously wrong with our Christian worldview however the scientific record for the past hundred years has been testifying the gaps are getting smaller and smaller and less and less numerous and problematic from a Christian worldview perspective whereas the other hand they're getting dramatically bigger and more numerous from a naturalistic perspective and probably the easiest place to document that is on the subject of the origin of life when it comes to the origin of life and Fuzzy's Ronna are staffed by chemists and myself we attend all the origin of life conferences of Bissell that take place in North America and we've been going to these conferences for twenty years more than 20 years you progressively see that the gaps from a naturalistic of perspective in trying to explain the origin of life are getting dramatically bigger more numerous and more intractable even to a point where I heard a lecture at an missile conference some years back or Leslie or gal the leading proponent of the RNA world hypothesis for origin of life paced back and forth and said I hope there are no creationists in the audience or what I'm going to say next it would take a miracle for an RNA molecule to show up on the primordial earth of course we wrote the quote down verbatim and you'll see it in our book origins of life that's great let's go back here again angels or demons and then how does that intersect with the paranormal phenomenon you hear about and folks researching ghosts well actually written a book on that called lights in the sky and little green men we don't have it here and I became an expert on the paranormal quite by accident you know you heard my story this morning I got into astronomy when I was seven when I was 16 I was the director of observations for the Vancouver Royal Astronomical Society I said we need to have an exhibit at the Pacific National Exhibition so I organized the exhibit but they put us right next to the Flying Saucer Club and what happened people go to their booth and come to us and say what do you think is going on here and from that moment onward I became the one go-to guy at the different universities about UFO reports so I wound up writing this book lights and sky and little green men with the help of a national security expert and our staff philosopher basically making this point the UFO phenomena is real now I had Carl Sagan as a professor briefly as at the University of Toronto he was insistent that UFOs don't exist that his worldview did not permit the existence of non-physical reality as a Christian my worldview does and from my research this is where the UFO phenomena belongs we can prove it's real because we got two thousand-plus documented cases where UFOs crash into the earth and they leave a crater if there's snow the snow has melted if there's vegetation that vegetation is damaged when we go to the crater site there's no debris there's no artifacts if a plane crashes into the earth you got debris a UFO crashes into the earth there's nothing except the crater but the fact that there's a crater tells us something real happened the other thing we notice is there's been cases where observers watch the UFO go through the atmosphere at velocities of greater than 20,000 miles per hour crash into the earth and leave this crater but as they're going through the atmosphere no sonic boom and no heat friction if it's a physical object you're gonna get a sonic boom they're gonna get heat friction now the Bible tells us God created two different species of intelligent life human beings that are physical and constrained by the physics of the universe and angels that are not physical and not constrained by the physics of the universe and so the proposal I raised but incidentally one big disclaimer 99% of what people have reported to me as UFOs are not real UFOs it's the planet Venus that supply these rising or the atmosphere as people seeing as Shawn Tulear from behind their window being projected on the horizon you know things like that but there's a 1% residual that fall into this category and I believe it's an angelic phenomena as beings and other dimensions that are coming in and that's what we see in the Bible God has granted the angels of power to come from their realm and enter our realm and go back to the realm he has not granted as human beings during this life to leave our realm and go into their realm were constrained to our realm now the whole question is are these UFO phenomena our manifestation of the righteous angels or are they a manifestation of the demons the Fallen Angels and this is where the work of the American physicist Allen Hynek I think is important he was the one that categorized them has Close Encounters of the first kind second kind and third kind and now we've got people saying Fourth Kind Close Encounters of the first kind is where the human has a contact with the UFO that's within 500 feet second kind is where there's communication going on third kind where there's actual physical contact fourth kind is where the human observer dies you don't want an encounter at the Fourth Kind but the whole point is the matter of whether it's 1st 2nd 3rd or 4th it's always deleterious the best you're going to come away with one of those Close Encounters is recurring terrifying nightmares worst case scenario you get these abduction stories or people suffer physical injury or even death but I think the real clue is this where you get these Close Encounters of the second kind is where you get this communication going on and very often the human observer goes into a trance where they receive a message through automatic writing from the so called UFO being you may have heard of the Iran Tia book that's a UFO book that came through automatic writing about 4,000 pages long much longer than the Bible but here's what's interesting almost a third of the total content at the in Iran Tia book is denying the deity of Jesus Christ so it looks like whoever communicated this as a mission to counter the Christian message and that will be in line with speaking the result of fallen angels but also we declare in our book is that this is scientifically testable because basically the Bible tells us is will not happen to you unless you've got open doors to occult activity and here's what I find interesting those nations of the world we got a large percentage of the population involved in the alcohol they're the ones seeing UFOs all the time and those nations where there's not much of that happening how much lower percentage of people are seeing UFOs moreover when I encounter people have had these Close Encounters and I'm able to help them to close the doors of the alcohol that's the end of their UFO encounters so one way you can put this to the test just get rid of the occult in your life that'll be the end of the UFO phenomena here's the opposite way start getting deep into the alcohol these things are going to happen to you I don't recommend that experiment like I say as a fan of the x-files I'm totally geeking out on that question we're gonna do just a handful of more questions we'll jump to this side question I was going to so I'll come up with another one you mentioned that there was about 1,500 verses talking about free will and there was another 1500 somewhere around there about God being in control and how everything is based our lives are destined and predetermined so the nice wondering how does prayer fall into that then because does your prayer when you when you pray does that cause what's been predetermined to actually happen or when you pray does that cause a change in what was supposed to be happened can you change your destiny or what was predetermined from a prayer that's an excellent question and one you'll find addressed in the book and by the way in the book we do give you all we give you a list of all the passages that talk about human free will and all the passages talk about human predestination but a practice crucially into prayer we need to understand as Christians that prayer is the most powerful tool God has put into our hands because there's a tool whereby we can call upon the transcendent God to interfere or intervene in the events of human beings and perform some kind of miracle to bring about an event we can do that through prayer but to pray wisely requires keeping in line mind both God's predestination powers and our human freewill responsibilities and so as we pray for God to intervene and the affairs of someone that we know of or in our own affairs how well you need to keep that in balance with God's saying while you're asking me to do this what is your part and so you know God often is asking us through prayers to realize you know it is not just God God has given me a challenge here to take a role in partnering with him on this I'll give you an example when I was still single living not too far from Caltech there was this an adult bookstore that opened up a couple blocks from where I live and it became a Center for prostitution and so I organized a bunch of the people in our church to come to my apartment and about 20 of us spent 24 hours in prayer and fasting about this particular incident you know asking God hey can you deliver this from our community but as we were praying and fasting throughout those 24 hours it became clear to us that God was asking us okay what is your role and so part of that prayer time was okay we worked out a plan we prayed all day if nothing happens we're gonna have another day of prayer and fasting or we're gonna pray and fast on the street where this bookstore is well be standing the bookstore we're not going to engage the people there but we're gonna be there praying and if that doesn't bring about results then we're going to start engaging the customers of this bookstore and so kind of laid out a step-by-step program of what we would do in terms of our own responsibility I said well before we take step 2 and even think about step 3 we're gonna vain' otherday of prayer and fasting where we just pray in my apartment and the next day that book store was closed and gone so sometimes God's just willing for us to dig what kind of action are you gonna take and often he says don't worry about it I'll take care of it but it requires in our prayer time of keeping and balance the predestination part and our human freewill responsibility part so whatever you do in your Christian ministry find ways to keep those two components and as much balance as possible whether you're praying whether you're sharing with people about your Christian faith whether you're reading the Bible just personally for edification always keep those two things in mind thank you alright due to time we're just gonna take one more question from each side I apologize to those of you with questions we won't be able to get to so we'll do one here and then one right here so I had a family member who was pronounced dead by paramedics can you come a little closer to the microphone because I know our time hearing you so I had a family member who was pronounced dead by paramedics and she was brought back to life so when she did come back to life we asked her did you see anything did you feel anything and she said that her perception at that time was completely black nothing can you give me a scientific or religious explanation for this yeah this falls into the whole category of near-death experiences and the near-death experiences are all over the map some of them are like that particular case where the individual from the medical perspective has stopped living the heart stops beating they start breathing and then they come back to life and it can be that particular kind of thing where everything just goes black and they come back other times people see that when they reach tall breathing and the heart stops they see a big bright light so it can be a bright light it can be complete darkness and depends what part of the brain is affected they can do that it can be a hundred percent natural however there is a residual it in near-death experiences where people experience leaving their body and we actually interviewed a medical doctor a surgeon about 20 years ago about these because he was the one that did the most extensive experiments and what he do in his operating room he would write messages on the top of the girder of the operating room and so when somebody claimed that hey they had left their body and came back to life well did you see what was written on the top of the girder and a baker quoted verbatim he says you know I think this is really one of those experiences where somebody left their body and came back and often what that happens is the person actually gets to experience the third heaven the Bible tells us there's three heavens the troposphere rain clouds form the heaven of the stars and the galaxies and the spiritual realm or God and the angels operate and sometimes in near-death experiences people at that encounter or they're brought up to heaven and they're being introduced to their loved ones that died before them in Christ then they're told they have to go back my own cousin on Vancouver Island had one of those experiences and he says yeah I was being welcomed by a all my relatives who had passed on ahead of me who were believers and they're excited they wanted to congratulate me but I was told I had to go back and so there are those near-death experiences to me I think what a strong evidence so there's something going on beyond life after death is and this happens much more frequently is the fact that when a Christian dies were those survivors who are Christians have doubt about whether they really are in heaven or not often there will be a short vision and what's interesting is a vision always lasts only five to six seconds where the person who has passed on appears to the Christian who was alive and tells them don't worry about me I'm in a good place I've made it you can stop worrying about me and then the vision disappears and that actually happened to my older boy he was in an incident where he and his friend were jumped on by three violent men who knifed him and his friend got knifed eight times and passed away my son only got Knight four times he managed to survive but he was in the hospital and the second day was in the hospital he sat up in his eyes bugged us his dad do you believe in visions and I said well tell me what did you see and he described a five to six second vision where he saw his friend and a beautiful force telling him he's fine don't worry about him my son was worried about this young man he was 22 he was the son of a pastor of a mega church at church this size and that son was going to go into the ministry of before he went of the ministry he decided he want to sow a few Wild Oats and so he was hitting bars and drinking and his dad was worried about him and my son was worried about him six months after my son had his vision I talked to the pastor and he told me he had the identical vision at the identical time of the same length now a friend of mine Gary Habermas he's at Liberty University I think a lot of you heard of them he's the world's foremost expert on the resurrection and he's actually writing a 4,000 page book on evidence for the resurrection I wasn't aware there was that much evidence and he said no Hugh I would write 5,000 pages but they're only gonna let me write 4,000 pages on the evidence historical evidence for the resurrection but he's also the one who told me these kinds of experiences of a vision we get reassured about where your loved one is it happens 35 percent of the time these are much more frequent than the near-death experiences but he says I want to write about that too basically to make the point the resurrection tells us there's life after death these near-death experiences are supporting evidence for that but these visions are also supporting evidence for that but there's no better evidence than the historical evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead as Paul explained in Corinthians if the resurrection happened then our faith is secure if the resurrection didn't happen then we're to be pitied amongst all people but he says we have the evidence 500 eyewitnesses saw the resurrected Christ and there is no other explanation for the resurrection of Jesus that disciples couldn't have stole the body that the Romans and the Jewish leaders had they would have produced it the evidence is really secure I can't wait to read those 4,000 pages that Gary Habermas is going to compose thank you you're welcome thank you dr. Ross for coming I think he was a for bringing out her us my question is in the story of Noah and God's promised not to flood the earth once again as a scientist I'd like to hear your take on climate change and the possibility of the polar ice caps melting and eventually flooding well it's interesting you ask that question I just finished a book on climate change [Applause] the book is titled weathering climate change it's it's at the printer right now and it will be released probably around April 1st and but I wrote the book from a Christian perspective making the point over failing to recognize his we humans think the extreme climate stability we've had for the past nine thousand five hundred years is the norm that's false when we're experiencing for these past nine thousand five hundred years is an exception has never happened before in the history of the earth where we've had this kind of extreme climate stability at the optimal temperature for our civilization so what I write about in the book or all the miraculous interventions from our Creator that made possible this brief window a time where we got there necessary climate stability to launch and sustain a population of seven plus billion people with high technology technology adequate to take the good news of salvation twelve of people groups of the world but also I wrote the book as to be kind of the anti Al Gore perspective because there's lots of books on climate change basically arguing climate change is real and we humans have got to do something to reverse it and if it requires sacrificing our economy so be it what I'm writing about in this book is that God gave us a command to Adam and Eve and later to Noah is that were to manage the planet for our benefit and for the benefit of all of their life and what we got coming from the Al Gore's of the world we need to sacrifice our benefit for the benefit of all of their life so there's two chapters in the book or saying there are ways we can stabilize the climate for many many more centuries while we boost the world economy rather than the world economy I mean after all the Bible says that we human beings are sinners trying to persuade the world's population to reduce their standard of living by a factor of four is going to be a hard sell people aren't going to do it and some of us do it other people are going to cheat it's not going to work what we need to do is show people how we can stabilize the climate for our benefit and the benefit of all their life and so yeah I got two chapters now we can do that that actually make the economy of the world more robust rather than less robust I mean if you can put more money in everybody's pockets who's gonna vote against it there's something I think all political parties who can get behind and saying this is a win-win all the way around and so we need to move in that direction so but the book will be out in either late March or early April okay so I just want to wrap up by reminding you why we do this event why we do even the series of messages we've been in for the last month called science and faith is two reasons one as Jesus says love God with your mind not check your mind at the door not don't think we have a thinking faith a rational faith a reasonable faith as believer so as Christians it's our duty to love God with our mind but here at Mosaic were a church for people who don't go to church which means this is a place where we do live QA all the time maybe not on a Sunday morning but in every environment it is okay to be real it is okay to be honest it is okay to ask the tough questions because that's what Jesus engaged and that's who his followers engaged as well so thanks for being here today and would you just join me in thanking dr. Ross for being here as well [Applause]

Channel: Mosaic Christian Church

Views: 103,985

Rating: 4.8297873 out of 5

Keywords: MosaicMD

Id: qZuaGchv0as

Length: 101min 14sec (6074 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020