My Aunt is a devout Christian.



So am I.



She doesn't believe in dinosaurs.



I do.







Who's right?



Does it even matter?







I'm not picking on my Aunt. I've met other people with similar (and sometimes stranger) ideas.

I found some interesting material on Young Earth Creationism on Wikipedia. Basically, it seems that Young Earth Creationists believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that Biblical history is the only history of the Earth and its inhabitants. The Leviathan and Behemoth and other "monsters" mentioned in the Bible may be dinosaurs or other "prehistoric" animals according to YEC philosophy. People and dinosaurs lived alongside one another like they did in the old caveman movies of the 50's and 60's. Science is flawed in its dating of the fossil record. Instead of skeletons buried over the course of millions of years, some YEC's contend the fossils were created when the animals were buried during the Great Flood. Others even suggest that Noah had dinosaurs with him on the ark. Good luck fitting a couple of Brachiosaurus in something thirty cubits high. Good luck feeding and cleaning up after them for about a year. (I'm assuming that dinosaurs were "unclean" animals and that there were only two of each instead of seven.)

Did Lot's daughters really sleep with their dad to repopulate the family after fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah? It seems an abhorrent thought, doesn't it? Did Abraham and Moses and Methuselah really live as long as the Bible says?

My take on most of the stories in the Old Testament is that they are stories meant to teach us. Could God have made all of those things happen? Absolutely. God can alter or ignore the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc. He wrote 'em. However, Jesus often spoke in parables, stories meant to teach, whose meanings are to be applied to our lives. These are stories that could have happened but may or may not have happened. I think that people miss the point in saying they HAD to have happened. We also spend too much time and energy debating whether it happened that way and not enough time doing the other things we ought to do.







God sent Jesus to Earth to save us from ourselves. We as a people have strayed so far from God that we needed His divine discipline or we had become so legalistic in our adherence to religious rules that we were missing the point. God's people were so busy sacrificing their livestock left and right, that they forgot about loving God (and indeed often forsook God for idols) and forgot to be merciful and loving to their neighbors. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for this and other reasons. These were supposedly the most pious adherents to God's laws as revealed to Moses. John the Baptist called them a "brood of vipers."






In OT times, the Mosaic law was the code by which God's people were to live. Problem was, a many people were living by the law, but not loving eachother enough. Still others were way off the chart, worshipping false gods and idols and participating in immoral and even murderous rites. Jesus came to change all that. God wants us to love Him and love each other and lead clean lives free from sin. God wants us to share the Good News about His Son, Jesus, with the world, that all might be have a chance to be saved and come to Him. We are justified by faith in Christ Jesus, not saved by good works. We are to do good works, yes. We are to avoid immorality in all forms. We are to lead good and blameless lives according to God's word. Ultimately, placing our faith and trust and love in God and Jesus is the key.

So whether you believe that the remains of Noah's Ark, that he built when he was 600 years old, are out there waiting to be discovered or that it was all just a great story about God's punishment of the wicked and salvation of the righteous, the important thing is that we recognize the Lord's lesson for us. Did Lot's daughters really sleep with their dad to repopulate the family after fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah? It seems an abhorrent thought, doesn't it? Did Abraham and Moses and Methuselah really live as long as the Bible says? The message matters most.

In my humble opinion, we can believe in the Holy Bible as the God-breathed truth without taking every story literally. The truth is, God made the world, whether in 6 days or 6 billion years. What is 6 billion years to One who always has been and always will be? God made us, either by planning for us to crawl slowly from the primordial ooze into the trees, then going about on all fours, then on two legs, or by starting us out pretty much the way we are now. God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Engaging in a lifelong argument about whether every story in the Bible actually happened exactly as written is to succumb to legalism in the same way the Pharisees did. We're missing the point. The stories in the Bible may have happened exactly as described. They may not have. They may have been stories to help people with a simpler understanding of the universe relate. That's probably why God expected animal sacrifices under the Mosaic law. The people understood it. When God felt we were ready, He sent Jesus to do His work on Earth and on the cross, ending the need for continual atonement. By faith in Jesus and His work on the cross, His death and resurrection, we are saved and brought back from our fallen sinful nature into God's grace.

From Dust We Came...

Did you ever become aware of a new piece of information without being able to remember exactly how or when you obtained it? I'm having one of those moments. At any rate, There is new information and a new theory about the origin of the universe and life as we know it.



It all came from dust.


That's right.



Dust.



Cosmic dust.



I did a little (ok, very little) research on the subject and found out that this some variations of this theory have been around for a few years now. Fascinating.



For a few years the scientific community has proposed that everything we know comes (one way or another) from dust. Believers have known this for a few thousand years already. God made us from the dust.



Genesis 2:7




Some people are worried that science is killing God. Science isn't killing God. Science can't kill God.




I saw an amusing t-shirt. It read:



God is dead.
-Nietzsche

Nietzsche is dead.
-God



Science is revealing God, little by little, in all His Glory and Majesty.



Science is a gift from God. He created us with questioning minds. We want to understand where we came from, who and what we are. He gave us science so we could learn everything except that which we were never meant to know. That we might learn all there is to know about everything except the one thing we can't ever explain: God Himself.

Years ago, I had an interesting conversation in a coffee shop with a lady several decades my senior. We were talking about modern medicine. I had just finished reading an article about nanobots, tiny little robots small enough to actually travel through the human body and perform surgical repairs on critical areas like the heart and brain. The article also hinted at the possibility that these little robots could be used to create smaller robots which in turn could create smaller robots and so on, down to an unbelievably small size. There is also the hypothesis that these little buggers might someday be programmed with (or scarier still, develop) artificial intelligence and maybe create other little robots spontaneously. As I shared this information with this elderly lady, she seemed to grow a little uneasy with the whole concept. She straightened herself in her chair, looked me in the eye and said in a slow, dignified, confident tone:

"God will stop it."

Well, maybe. God certainly could stop it, but does God have to stop it?

That's what you call one of those rhetorical questions.

Fact is, He doesn't have to. God isn't worried about us finding out what's behind the curtain. The mystery of creation is safe from human understanding unless and until God decides to reveal it to us. Right now, we're just not ready. We may never be. If He decided to show us before we were ready, then we'd probably all end up like the dude in the turban at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's absolutely mind blowing. In this life, we can't possibly understand or handle His glory. God revealed himself ever so slightly to Moses and afterward, Moses' face was so bright that no one could look upon him. We cannot fathom the utter majesty of the Lord's face.

Every mystery science solves in this area, leaves another mystery. The answer to the greatest mysteries is always the greatest mystery of all, God.

Some people believe in the big bang theory, that everything in the entire universe was condensed into one impossibly small speck of 'nothing' that (for no particular reason) exploded and scattered to eventually form all the 'something' that we now "know."

God-fearing believers know that the Lord created everything ex nihilo, out of nothing. Before and the boundless and infinite universe, there was only God, The Great "I Am."

If you contend as I do that these two scenarios are equally plausible, then it comes down to what you believe. It comes down to faith. You can either believe that God created the universe, or that it somehow created itself.

It's a lot like the question of whether God created man or man created God. It's the ultimate 'Which came first the chicken or the egg?' question. (My take on that one, BTW is that God made the first chickens [and roosters] and they got together and laid eggs and made more chickens. The bottom line is that it doesn't matter, because God could just as easily made fertilized chicken eggs which hatched into chickens which bred more chickens.)

I digress.

At the risk of knocking over a straw horse, I'm going to say that it's a no-brainer. If you believe that man created God, then you must believe that the universe created itself and we made up stories about God or gods to explain everything we didn't understand. Humans have done plenty of that. Even "civilized" ancient cultures like those found in Egypt, Greece, South and Central America, the Far East and so on, have or have had (mostly polytheistic, idolatrous) religions to explain why the world is the way it is and how it got that way. It is encouraging to note that many of the peoples in these cultures have found comfort in the Truth about the Living God. It is disheartening to think that many may have been converted under duress. It's also sobering to think of the billions who haven't yet heard or accepted the Truth. Depsite the advance of Christianity, there's still a long long way to go.

Wow. Looking back on this little e-pistle, such as it is, I realize just how rambling it is. That's the risk I run, I suppose, for writing stream-of-consciousness style. It's not exactly James Joyce or T.S. Eliot, but... it is what it is.

When we ponder something as infinite as the universe, we start to question things. I used to think that my questions and doubts were fatal flaws. I know now that God is way bigger than any doubts my feeble little mind can come up with. It's OK to doubt. God can handle it. Just don't let your doubts win in the end. Don't give up on your faith just because you have questions. Jeremiah questioned God. Moses questioned God. God responded. God will answer your questions, too. He's got all the answers. All of God's answers are the right ones, to boot, BTW. Look to Him for the answers.

Peace be with you.

Are you a "man's man."

I have a challenge for all the guys out there.

Don't be a "man's man."

I think the pressure placed on the males in our culture to be "manly" is largely responsible for a great many of our social problems. I think the issue stems from a thorough lack of understanding on our part of what God wants a man to be.

I think we need to set our sights much higher. Instead of trying to be "manly" we should try to be godly. Jesus set the bar. Way up there. He wasn't a "man's man." He was God as a man. He was God's man. That should be our target, too.

God did not intend for us to be a bunch of beer-swilling, tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed, oversexed, brawling Neanderthals. (My apologies to the GEICO cavemen)

Where I live, this last statement is akin to heresy. Too many men seem to think that this sort of behavior is exactly what makes a man a man. Worse, they are breeding little versions of themselves, passing a perversion of God's vision for us to future generations. Whether they realize it or not.

We are made in the image of God.

God is not a redneck.

I can't understand how some men can use the Lord's name in vain over and over again. It's almost as if they cannot utter a single sentence without saying something blasphemous. It's offensive and absolutely unnecessary. Sadly, most people have become so desensitized to it that it's a non-event in so many conversations. Why do people need to say "God" or "Christ" as if cursing? It bothers me even to hear somebody say "Oh my God." in response to the most trivial of events. Is any of this manly? It sure isn't godly.

Many people seem to think that a "man's man" is also supposed to be some sort of sexual conquistador, too. I think there's an overwhelming amount of biblical evidence (and an even more overwhelming amount of real-world evidence, too, for that matter) that a lack of restraint in this area is a surefire recipe for disaster. When a man sees a woman, he should look at her as Christ would look at her, with respect and genuine love, not lust. A "man's man" is lustful and objectifies women. God's man sees a beloved sister in Christ. A person of worth, fearfully and wonderfully made. The next time you look at a woman the wrong way, ask yourself if you would like some other man ogling your wife or daughter that way.

I think that most men make the excuse that they can't help it. That's just how guys are. They contend that every "real" man has an uncontrollable sex drive. Worse, they try to weasel out of the responsibility for it by saying that's how God made them.

Not so.

God gave us the sex drive, but we're the ones who have made it uncontrollable. It's a monster that grows when you feed it. Stop feeding it. I highly recommend the book Every Man's Battle by Fred Stoeker and Stephen Arterburn. Read this book. Internalize the message. You can starve the monster.

I challenge you to take down those posters in the garage. Burn your magazine and/or video collection, quit drinking, watch your mouth, stop smoking and chewing. If you do, you'll be better than a "man's man." You'll be a few steps closer to being God's man.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog, Unworthy Prophet.
Bear with me...I'm new at this.

I've been threatening to create a blog for some time now. Those who know me will probably think I'm crazy or just have too much time on my hands, but I do have a good reason for doing this-the best reason in the world, in fact. It was time to take the leap. It is truly a leap of faith. It is my sincere hope that my readers will find this blog interesting, useful, and inspiring. Please read on.

Just what do I think I'm doing?

What exactly is my purpose in creating and maintaining this blog? Well, frankly, It has to do with my conviction to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Several times in the New Testament, Jesus commands those he heals and helps to tell everyone what God has done for them. We should be no different. We owe everything good in our lives, indeed our very lives themselves, to Christ. This is my humble way of trying to give something back for what God and Jesus Christ have done for me. I hope that in these posts someone somewhere will find a reason to come to Christ. Further, I hope that those among you who are already believers will grow in your faith and love as you read these epistles. I hope these little sermons, such as they are, will empower each of you to share your faith with others and help them come to Christ and grow in the Faith. There is no higher purpose in life. In fact, life is without purpose apart from the Lord.

I gotta represent.


Why 'Unworthy Prophet'?

There has only ever been One who never sinned, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who came to us to die for our sins and restore our relationship with the Father. Without the Lord's grace, we would still be separated from Him by sin. The Most Holy Place would still be enshrouded by a heavy curtain.

As for me, I side with the apostle Paul, who routinely referred to himself as the least of all the saints. I, too, am the least of all-and hardly a saint. I have sinned greatly and repeatedly in my life, and I pray for the Lord's continued mercy and grace. I also pray for humility and wisdom, so I don't stumble again.

Unworthy?

Definitely.

Prophet?

Well, let's just say that I mean well. I hope my efforts, tiny respective to my sins and need for the Lord's grace, are pleasing to Him. Let the glory be given to God, for He is the only One worthy.

More soon.
Peace to you in Jesus Christ,
Damon