|
|
Volume 1, Issue 11
| October 23, 2011 |
|
Come meet us at our booth, this Friday and Saturday, October 28, 29
Northside Baptist Church, 333 Jeremiah Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28262
|
|
| |
Needed: A biblical forum for winnowing teachings and claims *
|
Greetings,
An official from an evangelical apologetics forum told me that he needed to wait until scientists from a world renown university endorses NAMI's discovery before his organization could host their presentation! (I suppose he thought that I would then come back to him.) Yes, there is a need for vetting because of bogus claims for Noah's Ark. One might think that offering evidence and allowing questions from an apologetics forum would be just the place for determining their truth. Why this bowing before unbelieving science? Are believers too gullible to be trusted? Seeking crumbs of recognition of the Bible's truth from science and fear of even discussing evidence of Noah's Ark can only be due to evangelical scholarship's inadequacy, insecurity, and shame.
No one is more eager than I to see top experts become involved with this discovery. Although we need their expertise and resources to learn more about this great artifact, we don't need their endorsement. This is not a time for cringing before unbelieving science, already at war with itself and getting ever more confused. Because science has no place for the exceptional, this is not something that naturalistic thinking can even understand. One best turn to ancient wisdom: historical memories of the earth's people and especially the book of Genesis. Ordinary people are going to be asking why science cannot explain this artifact and why they have failed to see the manifest evidence of the Flood in what science now understands as the remains of recent human history. Because even children can understand Noah's Ark, what the world must witness is the authority of science getting stepped on.
But scientific authority that remains somehow uncorrupted by political patronage and commercial interests cannot and should not end until there is something better. Too much falsehood and nonsense are being taught, not only in the world but within what is being claimed as the Christian faith. It is why everyone must guard what is taught in their schools and churches. Yet it seems that so many put their own spin on the words of the Bible and everything else claimed as truth. So how do those who do the guarding know what is true and what is false? The Scriptures declare that we have one faith and we ought all be teaching the same thing, just as did the Apostles. (Eph 4:13,14, 1Cor 1:10) Yet, even believers are not teaching the same thing. If Jesus entrusted the truth once and for all time to the church, one might ask why the church has not retained it. In fact, the church has retained it. We all have essentially the same Bible, though that does not solve the problem that Jesus explained in his parable of the wheat and tares. (Matt 13:36-43) From ancient times, tares of falsehood have been planted among the wheat. Teachings from un-inspired sources have been interpreting the inspired Scriptures! As Jesus commanded, both the wheat and tares have been growing until the end of the age. As Jesus explained (John 17:20-23), when believers become united in truth, the world will know them as his disciples, and that God has sent him. Their unity is why his first disciples made such an impact on the world. For this to happen again, there is needed an open forum for believers where teachings and claims can be presented and examined. Whatever is true can withstand the toughest examination. Those who really have truth don't mind questions. During his days on earth, even our Lord submitted himself to questions. Isn't it interesting just how much of his recorded words were from forums in which he was tested? Though Jesus did much of his teaching at the Temple, God's forum of truth is no longer a physical place or institution but a community. In ancient Israel that was the duty of the Levitical priests, now replaced by a kingdom of priests (see below). They will teach, assist, reform, and replace the community of scientific peers that currently do the checking on claims pertaining to historical truth. According to Jesus parable, there is an exciting promise for the end of the Age. The Lord will gather the tares in bundles. At the end of the Age, apostasy will be in many places, but his excluded wheat will be left to be gathered as one. According to Jesus, at that time the righteous will shine as the sun in the Kingdom of the Father. What joyful brightness. What exciting times ahead! Best regards to all, Philip Williams |
|
New recipients
If this is your first, please take a look at our archive of earlier newsletters. |
The threshing floor of Zion
A barren rock that became the ancient symbol for where God's truth goes out to the world.
Ancient Jerusalem began as a barren rock. (Zion means barren.) Nothing could grow there, but at the end of the season the surrounding peoples would bring their wheat to be threshed on the rock and their produce to share. Peace and order at this farmer's market was kept by Melchizedek, King of Salem (peace).
The threshing floor where God built his one Temple became a beautiful type for the freedom of bringing teachings to be tested by God's church. The rock gave its name to the free woman who, as the prophet Isaiah (chapter 54) saw, would likewise be barren until the harvest at the end of age. She is barren because those hungry for righteousness and truth refuse to bring forth children through any substitute for the pure truth.
The Apostle Paul used Abraham's wife Sarah as a type of the free woman, who he used to describe the church of those born of the Spirit. As was Isaac, her children would be persecuted by the children of the slave woman, who he depicted as Abraham's concubine Haggar. Though of the same family, the sons of the slave woman persecuted those of the free woman.
Persecution did not end with the Apostles. Though the ages, those seeking more truth have been persecuted even by those of the same family of faith. America was founded by those seeking religious freedom. Due to lack of religious enforcement, the churches of the Old World thought that Christianity would end in America. In fact, it flourished.
In America's universities, scientific dogma and political correctness has ended academic freedom. Though more freedom for the faith may be found in churches and Christian schools, NAMI's discovery - when a matter so key to the truth of our faith is more shunned than welcome - shows just how unfree our faith has become. Will the free woman be barren once again?
I don't think so. The fires of opposition are God's way of purifying his church, of separating those who are true from those who are not. For now, they are a small group, hardly visible to the world. But the Scriptures say in the last days, the little mountain of the Lord (Zion) will be raised to become chief among the world's high places to which all the peoples of the earth will stream. From there is truth will go out to all nations. This must happen before the present age ends.
|
|
|
| The scientific and biblical methods for determining truth
The chief problem is not so much the scientific method but how it has been so greatly ignored
 | |
Levite and priests
|
The truth of science, we are told, is maintained by the scientific method. Many good things have been written about the scientific method: the need for testing, the need for peer review, insuring that the researchers' bias does not influence his results, and a body of accepted knowledge by which to test new theories. With regard to the big issues like origins, the problem has not been the scientific method, but how it has been so famously ignored.
Evolution, for example, cannot be tested because it explains everything. Thomas Kuhn coined the word paradigm for big theories like evolution that cannot be tested, but become a light in which everything else is explained (or explained away). Karl Popper, another philosopher of science showed how a theory like Marx's dialectical materialism or Freud's psychoanalysis that explain everything about their subjects in fact explain nothing. The same is true of the theory of evolution.
In truth, all the valuable things about the scientific method are found in both the Old and New Testaments. Things are to be tested before those charged with maintaining truth. Though anyone could prophesy (bring forth new words from God) priests were the community charged with testing prophecy and preserving the truth. Witnesses must be called. Preference is not to be given either to the wealthy or the poor. Those who bring false claims are to be punished or excluded. It is thus not surprising that modern science arose from the famous biblical culture that followed the Reformation.
|
 The Archaeological Evidence
 | | Click to purchase |
The Archaeological Evidence of Noah's Flood is available from many online booksellers. We notice that the fastest and most reliable way of obtaining the book is from our website which can be accessed by clicking the book icon at right.
Price: $34.95
S & H: 4.00 (US addresses)
Tax: 2.70 (NC residents only) |
|
| Do Christians need more truth?
Is the notion of a church that cannot become apostate or grow in understanding of the Bible?
 | | Elijah on Mt. Carmel |
I once heard a philosophy professor explaining the difference between science and religion. "Science," he declared, "grows in knowledge and understanding, but religion's teachings are fixed." With regard to Christianity, I knew that somehow did not ring true. Sure, the foundations are fixed. We have in the Scriptures, the faith 'once and for all time entrusted to the saints.' (Jude 3) The problem, as Jesus explained in the parable of the wheat and tares, is that the light of truth has been dimmed by false teachings. These grow together till the end of the age.
Still, the professor's insight expressed the attitude even of many forms of Christianity: their churches cannot become apostate and have all the truth they will ever need. It is the attitude that Karl Barth described as 'the blessed possessors of the faith.' These see apostasy as applying to individuals or outsiders. But a people of God who cannot become apostate is not to found in the Bible (aside from that promised for the Kingdom of Heaven). Throughout the Bible, apostasy of the people of God was more the norm than the exception. Consider (see picture) Elijah's confrontation of the prophets of Baal. Yes, it is mainly in the Old Testament, but Jesus warned that it would happen again. The Apostles applied the example of Israel's apostasy to the Church's future.
The prophets of the Bible condemned those who were at ease in Zion. In the book of Isaiah, the Lord describes himself as sick of Israel's endless cycle of sacrifices and feasts. The Apostle Paul wrote of the last days where people would have a form of religion but would deny its power. Where today is the God of Elijah?
|
|
NAMI's Ark documentary
| Give image time to download
|
 (Documentary)
|
Join Our Mailing List!
If I somehow got your email on my mailing list to which you did not want to be subscribed or if you received this at more than one of your email addresses, please accept my apology and unsubscribe by using the SafeUnsubscribe utility below.
|
|
|
About Us
Christian Leaders & Scholars is the newsletter and publication site of Philip Ernest Williams, author of The Archaeological Evidence of Noah's Flood (2011). The site is also a ministry not only to Christian leaders and scholars but all who are interested in the more difficult issues pertaining to the Bible and its implications for science and history. (Read more) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
