Exploring the Value of the Word of God
Live from Salt Lake City, Utah, this is Heart of the Matter where we do all we can to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. I’m Shawn McCraney, your host.
Show 34 511
Creation – Part V
August 23rd 2016
In my stance against Sola Scriptura, as articulated in the book, Knife to a Gun Fight, and my full Preterist views, I have run into a block wall which has tormented me for not just a few months. The question? How to truly explain the value to the Word of God in today’s world – aside from all the rhetoric.
I mean, (say my friends in the faith), if everything is done, and the Spirit is primary and preferential, and a person does NOT need to either read or understand the Bible to be saved, what is its purpose? Where I fully understand its purpose to me in my life I have had a difficult time convincing others that my subjective views of its value are as important to them and the world at large.
Personal Experiences and Insights
I want to admit something here that may sound strange or at least fringy. In my life I have experiences that teach me principles. Typically I am engaged with thinking about a problem or am working through an issue and I believe God arranges for me to live through situations and experiences to teach me what He wants me to know. It has happened to me since I was a child. You don’t have to believe them nor apply them to yourself but through them I gain greater insight into an element of truth – and the things I learn are always in harmony with sound biblical concepts.
So I’ve been churning over the question about the value of the Word in the world since Jesus has returned, since He has had the victory, and since we are primarily led by the Spirit in the body today? So last Wednesday I started getting text messages from a man who used to attend CAMPUS but could not trac the information provided. His texts were relentless and non-sensical, just words like Buzz and crispy.
I tried to reel him in and let him know that his words were a waste of time. He would touch on certain subjects but relentlessly kept texting me throughout the day – a total of 85 texts in a 7-hour period. I tried to end the onslaught that night but woke to five question marks on Thursday. I decided I had to set him straight and stop the texts.
Real-Life Encounters
A half hour later I got a call from a family member who was very upset with me. She was once on fire for the Lord and was in his Word daily but life and its struggles along with the world slipped in around her and exposure to the Word, which was once daily, had become non-existent. And in this particular confrontation so did the fruit of the Spirit. Her biting relentless words – via phone conversation and text – were peppered my way throughout the day.
In between, during and around the calls and texts from my daughter I met up with a man – a believer – whom I have known for a decade. Though accomplished in many things in the world he remains a man of sorrows and battles the strength of his flesh daily. Every three or four days, for the past ten years, I have had conversations with him and over the course of our relationship he has battled pot, alcoholism, porn addiction, and great bouts of depression.
Here’s the thing about him – he is VERY well read – has read hundreds of books – but most of them are self-help – books filled with the wisdom of Man. In my estimation they have little to help him and he continues, like a wave, to battle the wiles of this world around him. The interesting thing about him is that in reality he cannot stand reading the Word of God. He’ll do it, often due to pressure from me, but it does not last. I’ve asked him what it is about the Word that causes such resistance in him. His response is often, “I don’t know.”
As I walked to greet him my phone was buzzing with calls and texts from my relative – out of her mind with rage against me so in my pocket I was reminded of the results of a person
Struggles with Faith and Seeking Truth
who has turned from the Word of God (and to the things of this world to comfort her) while standing right in front of me was a man who had essentially done the same. Both are believers. Both in need for help, both struggling.
As I drove away from my friend I got a call from my sister. As we talked my phone buzzed with more texts from my relative describing my sorry soul. My sister is an active Mormon but apparently I had called her right at the time that she had accepted an invitation from a man from a religion called, The Twelve Tribe.
While LDS my sister is a seeker. I’ve tried to tell her for years that the answers are not in men, not in religion, not in books but in God. I’ve suggested she just read the Bible. No go. So refusing to let go of activity in the LDS church she remains seeking without finding, allowing the promises of other to reassure her than the Word of God.
While she spoke I got a text from a gal who has wandered from a steady diet of Bible reading and has “moved on” to nature, living life with God in the woods, and a very intellectual approach to the faith. Her distancing from the Word began years ago and I was looking at the result – she had sent me a text that included a video clip from a rauchy movie. She wrote:
“So effing good.”
Encounters and Reflections
A culminating meaning of all of these contacts did not register with me yet – little did I know what was in store. After not being able to convince my sister that the Twelve Tribes were just another cult, and after attempting to say something nice about the vulgar video, and then dodging a vicious message about what a rat I am, I drove looking for somewhere to just sit and cool off and work on an upcoming teaching.
As I drove somewhat aimlessly another man from the ministry who I have known for years started texting me. The Subject? The Words of God. That Words are everything. Words, the Words of God – several texts, but I was driving and only read them and responded as best I could.
For reasons unknown to me I chose to go into a Taco Bell – I think it was because I just wanted a Diet Pepsi and wasn’t planning on eating. I rarely go to Taco Bells but for some reason I did that day. When I walked in the door I was greeted by a large young man, Hispanic, who was sitting at a table and eating a stack of burritos.
Unexpected Invitations
From the table he greeted me and asked, “What’s your name?” I told him and he asked if I would like to sit with him at his table. I told him no because I had some work to do.
I approached the counter and a woman with a wild look in her eye asked me if I wanted anything, then she took a phone out of her pocket and started typing into it maniacally. I asked her if she was placing my order through the phone and she blankley looked up into my eyes and said, “no.”
I ordered a drink and when she handed me the cup asked, “What’s your name?” I told her and then she came from around the counter and talked to me as I filled the cup with ice and Diet Pepsi. She rattled off all sorts of disconnected information and used my name over and over again as she talked. Words, words, words.
My phone beeped. More words. The dye job of her hair, the condition of her skin and teeth and the type and location of her numerous tattoos said, present meth or former meth addict. I took my seat. As I reached for my backpack to get my laptop the Hispanic young man began talking – incessantly and with all manner of meaningless insights and observations.
His name was “Jezus” and before long his yammering included an invitation for me to engage with him in some homosexual act or another. He said I was a very attractive bear and that his boyfriend would really like me. I declined but noticed that I was being offered sex from a man named Jesus in a Taco Bell.
My phone buzzed. It was my relative – more
Observing Chaos in a Restaurant
words of anger. As I regretfully considered what the text said a man in a dirty cut off t-shirt came in to the lobby. He was out of his mind and talked and laughed tirelessly (and to himself) in the air. The only time he stopped talking and laughing was when he ordered, then he sat across the lobby at a table and continued. He was yammering on and on.
Jesus was yammering on and on. Texts were coming in at a steady beat. My sister. My family member. The nature girl with more comments. Words.
A young man, jerking with methamphetamine-induced tweaks, was now at the counter – how he got there I do not know. The bottle blonde asked him to leave. He called here a vile name. She called him something worse and he got angry and threw a handful of taco sauce packets to the floor before storming out and shouting – words.
My phone buzzed. It was my relative. It read:
“You are the worst human being on earth.”
From the side door a thin woman dressed in almost nothing but a pair of white see-through spandex shorts, filthy at the crotch, burst into the place and stormed to the counter. Apparently she was the girlfriend of the insulted tweaker who had just left. A verbal altercation occurred with both the employee and white shorts dramatically voicing their opinion of the other – all vile, all vulgar, none of it kind or sensitive or even reasonable.
Dirty girl’s boyfriend then rushed back in and lunged at the one behind the counter. I’m not sure where everyone came from but in no time there were a half dozen street people of every size and shape and condition gathered into the restaurant – all of them talking excitedly, laughing, and egging the confrontation on.
The Unfolding Mayhem
The spirit of the room seem to ignite Jesus and he began to narrate the situation, as if an announcer on television. The chaos at the counter continued with the actors, for reasons unknown to me, rushing out of the restaurant screaming unintelligible things and then returning minutes later to join back in the fray. More new characters came in from the street – all unwashed, all drug abused, all willing to toss their two cents in to the pot.
My phone buzzed. It was a clip from a friend of someone miming a Metallica song with a puppet on their hand.
Suddenly filthy shorts girl came running out of the bathroom and screaming said that another girl in the bathroom had had a heart attack. Her cries and words were heart-felt. But instead of rushing to the bathroom the crew around the counter began to fight with each other! Jesus stood excitedly and called 911 shouting that someone was dying in the restroom.
A morbidly obese man came in from the door leading from the street, pushed through the crowd toward the counter and impatiently waited to order. When the manager finally popped out from the back he ran to the restroom and came out and said, “There’s nobody in there,” and filthy pants broke out into broken tooth hysteria. The manager demanded the room to clear and after great resistance and chaos the pack moved out through the side doors. The Fire Department pulled up – only to learn it was a false alarm.
Aftermath and Reflections
Another call from my relative. Exhausted, I answered. All I can remember hearing was, “I hate you.” Click.
A woman in a long skirt frayed at the hem and a tank-top stained by life wandered inside, her eyes suggesting she wanted something and it almost didn’t matter what it was. A man covered in scars and tatts entered and motioned to others who were standing in the parking lot to join him. He was apparently a scout. He too asked me without any other introduction my name. He then told me his and explained in locquacious detail how he has been shot and stabbed – dramatically reenacting the events without any solicitation. He then explained his philosophy on life.
An emaciated teen came in with a bicycle, flipped it upside down, walked to the counter, and after waiting for a solid two minutes finally got permission to fill her water bottle. I put my glasses on. She was not a teen at all, but a wrinkled emaciated woman in her mid-sixties. She glared at me, grabbed her motocross bike and using the front tire to push it open burst out the door. My phone buzzed. Another
Street Scene
Cryptic message. It buzzed again, another text about the greatest religion being nature. Suddenly the tatted bottle-blond behind the counter sprinted from the kitchen area toward the exit and then out into the parking lot. Dirty shorts was riding a motocross bike and bottle-blonde ploughed her over while she was in transit, knocking her violently to the ground. Then she ran back into the restaurant to take her position behind the counter. All hell broke loose as all the street people rushed back into the place, screaming and demanding legal justice – one of their own, the unemployed, the indigent, the drug abuser, was screaming for the woman to be put in jail. She wailed like a child who dropped her ice cream cone. Jesus called 911 (again) and in the meanwhile all manner of verbal threats were made. Insults were exchanged. The laughing man laughed louder. And once again the manager came from the back and ordered all parties out – again to agitated verbal protestations.
My phone buzzed again. I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t read or hear another word from another human being. The police came, and the fray drained out into the parking lot. No charges were made. Filthy pants and bottle-blonde were sisters. The group disbanded, the emotions were bottled back up inside each participant, waiting to be released in another week, day, hour or minute. A couple entered – he was shaking and red and shiny with sweat, she was making demands from the menu, her size 30 skirt barely able to contain her corpulent lower body. A man staggered in and sat, beard and hair filthy with the words and ways of this world. Before packing up and going to have dinner with his boyfriend Jesus posted a picture of the place on his Facebook then asked, as if we had been friends for years, “What should I call . . . this?” I said, “Taco Hell.” He chuckled, pushed a button and gleefully said, “done!” Then he walked over to the manager, whose face was drawn and gray, and said, “I’m gonna come back here and apply. This place is great.” And after bidding me goodbye (by name, by the way) he walked out of the place, through the band of walking dead, and disappeared.
A New Day
I laid in bed that night unable to sleep. I wondered what it all meant, what was I to learn from it, to see, to use. I woke the next morning and only realized then and there that the common denominator of every single person I mentioned in this story was the same – a lack of the Word of God living in them by the Spirit. Every single one of them. It was a new day, Friday, August 19th 2016. I drove to a Del Taco to do some work. But started, as I always do by not only reading the Word of God but fully realizing its power and purpose in the lives of human beings and knowing its purpose on earth today. And with that let’s continue on our discussion of Creation.
Creation Discussion
Alright, let’s get down to it – the Creation. And we’ll begin with the debated discussion of how long it took God to create the heaven and the earth. Hovering around this question are other ancillary arguments like how old the earth is, if the flood was world-wide, if the ark held all animal species on earth (dinosaurs included) and things along these lines. Specifically, the arguments are really between biblical literalists and what we might say are biblical liberals and speaking specifically of days of creation the arguments re polarized into two general camps – Old Earther’s and New Earther’s.
Old Earther's vs. New Earther's
If I understand it right Old earthers believe that the earth is . . . ooooollllllldddd. And shy away from the “several thousand year stance.” Included in this is a debate about whether God created the earth in six literal 24 hour day-periods OR if those days explained in Genesis represent periods of some other amount of time. Young earth proponents might be best described, for the most part, as taking the Bible most literally, and therefore through mathematical computation derived from the text they deem the earth to be less than 10,000 years old. The literalism they implore is typically taken out to other areas of biblical interpretation but even they, on occasion, will admit that certain passages cannot be
Perspectives on Creation
One of the most popular new earther’s today is a brother named Ken Ham (out of Australia). His ministry called “Answers in Genesis” operates a “creation apologists organization” and includes things like replicating Noah’s Ark in the real-life dimensions (found in Genesis 6) and costing over one hundred million dollars. I do not know anything about brother Ham but I am sure he means well in his efforts. Is he right? Could be.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have a gaggle of believers who take the contents of the Bible more, shall we say, open to scrutiny – especially in light of today’s standards of measurements. Who’s right?
I would offer this simple opinion regarding the age of the earth, the time of creation, the worldwide flood, the Ark – and how it fit all the animals, the waste management and food demands – none of it – no matter the stance or opinion – I don’t care how conservative or liberal they are – changes or alters the Good News. None of it. Believe however you are going to believe – Young earth, Old earth – but Know that God so loved the World He sent His only begotten Son to save us . . . and He did. This is the good news.
Unity Among Believers
Am I simplifying the matter in the name of convenience? In a way. You see, Jesus said something important in Matthew 5: “Blessed are the peacemakers – for they shall be called the Children of God.” I believe we are peacemakers by sharing Jesus, the Prince of Peace, with those who don’t know Him but can also be peacemakers when we refuse to divide over these disputable matters. This is a higher plane hovering over the world and we ought to see it as the goal for believers to rise to and live.
The problem is the divisive polarized groups both believe that their opinions allow them to deride the other side. Typically speaking, those who are liberal and read the biblical narrative liberally are quite dismissive of our conservative brethren and sisters and call them zealots, crazies, and the like. On the other hand, the biblical literalists often demand that there is NO other way for Christians to interpret biblical information, even to the point that some will call biblical liberals unsaved, not Christian, or even going to hell for maintaining their liberal views. We all need to grow the heck up – believe what we are going to believe but fully allow and in love embrace those of differing views. Now that I’ve pointed this out, I am going to present what I think – again admitting that I may be wrong AND I fully accept those who see things differently.
Views from Renowned Christian Leaders
Let me begin by appealing to the fact that there are plenty of renowned Christian leaders who do not side with the New Earth stance on the length of time it took God to create the universe and how old the earth is. R. C. Sproul, a noted five pointed Calvinist, the founder of Ligonier Ministries (and the man who drafted the original Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy – that’s important because Sproul really pushes for the Bible to be the final authority on earth), once said, “When people ask me how old the earth is, I tell them I don’t know—because I don’t.” Contrary to what is often implied or claimed by young-earth creationists, the Bible nowhere directly teaches the age of the earth.
Again, through Biblical deduction MEN have tried to answer the question but scripture does not tell us. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be God does not want us to know . . . or even care? The New Earth believers suggest that a “plain reading” of Scripture makes the age of the earth obvious and often say that believers never doubted its young age until men like Charles Darwin popped up.
And listen, since I’ve mentioned Darwin I want to say this – Christians are not at war with Darwin or those who teach Darwinism. We are not at war with evolutionists – evolution may play an important role in the way God engineered the universe. Darwin may have brought things to the table for Christians to learn about. Again, taking sides as a means to go to war is just another way to separate us from agreeing on Jesus as Lord and sharing Him with the world.
Diverse Perspectives on the Age of the Earth
See these battles for what they are! – Divisive tools to keep human beings from loving each other. Anyway…
The idea that no one doubted the age of the earth until after Darwin is simply NOT true. It may come as a surprise to some of our more literal brothers and sisters that some stalwarts of the faith were not convinced of the young earth interpretation.
Augustine, writing in the early fifth century about the length of days in the creation account, said, “What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible, to determine” (City of God 11.7).
J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), author of the 20th century’s best critique of theological liberalism (in other words Machen was extremely conservative), wrote, “It is certainly not necessary to think that the six days spoken of in that first chapter of the Bible are intended to be six days of twenty-four hours each.”
Did you hear that? One of the most conservative Christian thinkers of the 20th century admits that six days do NOT necessarily need to be six 24-hour periods!
Insights from Notable Scholars
Old Testament scholar and defender of biblical inerrancy, Edward J. Young said (regarding the length of the creation days), “That is a question which is difficult to answer. Indications are not lacking that they may have been longer than the days we now know, but the Scripture itself does not speak as clearly as one might like.”
One of the most moving and vital theologians of the 20th Century and defender of scriptural AUTHORITY said: “Faith in an inerrant Bible does not rest on the recency or antiquity of the earth… The Bible does not require belief in six literal 24-hour creation days on the basis of Genesis 1-2… it is gratuitous to insist that twenty-four-hour days are involved or intended.”
Old Testament scholar and Hebrew linguist Gleason Archer (1916-2004), another strong advocate for biblical inerrancy, wrote “On the basis of internal evidence, it is this writer’s conviction that yôm in Genesis could not have been intended by the Hebrew author to mean a literal twenty-four-hour day.”
Now, can we find scholars who will say otherwise? Of course, we can. And they may be right. Or maybe the scholars I quoted are right. What again, what does all this PROVE?
It proves that we ought to set these divergent opinions on the back burner when it comes to fellowship and ministerial outreach. It means we ought to let such divisions die a natural death so we can all share Jesus with those who have not received Him and so all followers of Christ can fellowship with each other in love. This will not happen until we willingly and unitedly step away from debating such things by stepping up to the new plane of Christian engagement.
The Pitfall of Ministry Focus
Before we open up the phone lines I want to point something out – and I am able to point it out because I’ve been there. When people get in apologetic ministry (of ANY sort) it is most frequently because they ardently believe that what they are standing for is really, really important to the Lord and His church. This impetus – “I have something that is really really important to share or defend or promote” – can easily act like blinders and cause a person who started out with good intentions to become a close-minded myopic zealot consumed with their pet cause. Before long “the ministry” becomes more important than anything (and everything) else – including growth, new information as it comes in, and love. The ministry can become more about “being right” (and pleasing the army of right people who support it) than being His.
Next week, reasons why I believe the 24-hour day interpretation is not necessarily the only way to view the creation account.
