David Pawson - Genesis 2

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THOUGHTFUL THOUGHTS 7.8.26 BY JOHN DUNNING.

GENESIS - Part 2. SPIRITUAL WARFARE

1). PROLOGUE

A science teacher visited a successful Christian businessman, who had been one of his pupils. In the office of the Christian businessman, the visiting teacher was impressed by a globe of the world in the corner of his office, and so he asked who made it. 

The Christian businessman replied that a big bang had made it, so the teacher laughed, replying, “No seriously, I would like to know who made it?” 

So, the Christian replied, “Well I’m just telling you what you taught us in school!”

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2). INTRODUCTION

My eldest brother lost his faith at University studying Bio-chemistry. 

If parents want their children to have their Christian faith after they pass through our education systems, it is important that parents take apologetics seriously.

This week our study is dedicated to students who need to defend their faith before fellow students. Students often have to contend with being laughed at if they believe in God. 

The theory of evolution is taught as if it were fact, making Christian students often crumple, if they have no answer to offer. Too often they give in to peer pressure to find acceptance.
What is unreasonable is to believe that matter appeared out of nothing, from a vacuum without a Creator. Faith in our Creator God explains how we got here, which is a perfectly reasonable explanation of how matter was created when there was “nothing”.

Note to parents:- statistically, churchgoing students who have not already made a commitment to Jesus before starting work, will show little interest in following Jesus Christ after they start work, and this shows the importance of what we are discussing here, and that statistic came to be true of my eldest brother. 

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3). CATCH UP ON SATAN’s PLAN A…

Last week we saw that Satan’s Plan A of using the church to ban the Bible (and science), was running out of steam. Bible believing Christians fought back against the church by printing Bibles in the local language, even at the cost of being murdered for it. Jesus said that the father of the murderer is Satan. But the truth of the Bible had finally escaped! Believers learned to ignore the church and obey God instead. 

For the first time since religious leaders tried to make an empire called ‘christendom’, but nicked-named “The Dark Ages” by historians, God fearing scientists started to be able to write about their discoveries without fear of being murdered for it.
CS Lewis writes about the tricks of Satan in his book, “The Screwtape Letters”. 

As Satan’s “Plan A” started to come apart in the Reformation, Satan came up with a “fix”, which we come to next… Jesus referenced Satan only a few times, but it was enough to recognise his existence and the problems he causes, which we will partly develop next…

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4). SATAN’s Plan B;- Discrediting Genesis.

Enter “Plan B”, which was to discredit the Bible… Once the truth was out, with the Bible being printed, Satan twisted science to discredit the truth. (In Genesis we see how Satan tricked Eve by twisting God’s words. In the temptations of Jesus in the desert, we saw how he twisted Scripture.) In our history, Satan introduces doubt on Genesis. Now, Christian students need arguments for their faith to reply with at school and Uni before they are made to feel ignorant, so I have come up with a few basic arguments students can use when challenged.

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5). EVOLUTION?!

Evolutionary scientists have invented a replacement for God, called “The Big Bang”. One smart reply for Christian students can be to ask, “Who made the Big Bang?!” In other words, those trying to replace God with theories can be answered back, by asking who created the matter for the big bang that evolutionists rely on?

Evolutionists can’t answer the problems they create, like who created the “matter” that is needed for their big bang theory, as it cannot be created or destroyed. So students can answer!

If Christians start winning the argument, evolutionists point to the church as denying science. For example, Galileo had to take back his scientific findings because he was threatened by the Vatican.

But of course the truth is that it was due to Christians at the Reformation that fought for the truth and fought against the church to bring about enlightenment. Twisting science for their own purposes the church did first and then evolutionists did later. 

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6). THE LAW OF PHYSICS…

The first law of physics that I was taught at school was; “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed – but only changed from one form to another”.

When Richard Dawkins was asked how “nothingness” could result in the Big Bang! He couldn’t answer and the audience laughed. 

Something cannot come from nothing. The laws of physics state it as an impossibility. Yet, the theory of evolution breaks the very laws of physics which scientists agree is the most elementary principle. Christians say that God existed first and created matter.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes detective stories… and he got his character to come out with;- “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.

That sounds very logical to me! Paul tells us in Romans 1:20 that creation itself points to a Creator God. The logic of that means that many thousands of scientists believe in God. 

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7). DARWIN & WHO?

This next section is to help students get answers for their studies.
David Pawson points out that Charles Darwin read the ideas of Erasmus Darwin (who was his grandfather), who wrote down his thoughts on evolution after first getting his ideas from the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. 

This becomes important as we see that Darwin’s book was a development of the philosophies of all that his grandfather had written about before, to which Charles added using his own thoughts. One of the things was the size of animals on Galapagos - but we know that before the flood, animals were much bigger, one of which David called Leviathan.

After doing a bit of research, I discovered that there is a great long list of philosophers and biologists who built on the ideas of Aristotle, and those that went before - like this…

a). Plato had a thought about human development, 

b). which Aristotle developed by adding biological development to it. 

c). His ideas were developed by Goethe. 

d). Then Count George-Louis Le Clere de Buffon developed Goethe’s ideas.

e). Then along came Jean-Baptiste Lamarck who developed Count George-Louis Le Clere de Buffon’s ideas. 

f). Then the grandfather of Charles Darwin, (Erasmus Darwin), copied and developed Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s thoughts…

g). until Charles Darwin came along and developed his grandfather’s ideas. He ended up writing a thesis using his drawings from his great expedition. In other words, Charles Darwin did not come to his conclusions independently and by his own observations, but was already pre-programmed. He used his observations to fit the programming he already had from grandad.

The order of events for creation that science came up with for creation is the same order as described in Genesis. How could Moses have known that? Well could it be by Divine revelation?!!!

A huge number of scientists are Christians because of what they know as scientists. In fact David Pawson did a science degree before ever studying theology, and because of that, he trained in how to question things, in order to get at the truth of something.
David’s six part series on Genesis looks at ideas and theories as well as theology, so it should help students to prepare themselves for science studies, so that they can answer those who ask us to give an account of our faith, as Paul proposed we do.

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8). EPILOGUE

Especially for our students…

The picture with this blog shows how the sun gives heat and light to the earth. Think on the miraculous nature of the earth being exactly the right distance from the sun with the exactly the right alignment to benefit from the sun’s rays. That is just one of millions of miracles, and you are another. 

A Christian investigative journalist in New Zealand, ‘Ian Wishart’, went to the trouble of laying on a conference led by Christian creation scientists giving evidence for “Intelligent Design”. At the conference, they covered the details in basic life forms having advanced “motor” features. Darwin wrote that if it was discovered that basic life forms had advanced “motor” features, that would undermine evolution! 

Well that was discovered! It leaves us to wonder at God’s amazing design. 

Schools don’t go into “Intelligent Design”, after a USA court decided that “Intelligent Design” cannot be taught as science. (Doing so would undermine the politically correct theory of evolution.) Darwin concluded at the end of his book that there is a God, and that the world has a Creator.) Paul said that creation itself points to a creator;- (Romans 1:20).

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Richard Dawkins discounts the evidence of a creator God, and yet cannot explain how “nothing-ness” created “something”. 

If you are a student being made fun of for believing in a creator, know that more scientists believe in a creator than those who don’t, and an easy answer is to ask your peers how “matter” came from “nothing-ness”.

A great many scientists do believe in a Creator, so if you are a Christian student, rest assured that fellow students who make fun of Christians use shallow laughter to hide ignorance.

Jesus quoted Genesis and Christian students should rather believe Him!

Science does point to God and what God has made.
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Do share this study with your friends…

This is John Dunning signing off from “Thoughtful Thoughts” for another week.

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PS. To help pray for the ‘suffering church’ see;- https://barnabasfund.org/nz/pray/daily-prayer/#previous-dates

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