It Is Written

In the Beginning

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: John Bradshaw (Host), Dr. Mortensen

Home

Series Code: IIW

Program Code: IIW001326


00:07 It has stood the test of time, God's book, the Bible.
00:17 Still relevant in today's complex world.
00:22 It Is Written ...
00:25 sharing hope around the globe.
00:36 Thanks for joining me today.
00:37 I'm John Bradshaw and this is It Is Written.
00:42 [Music] On February 12 in the year 1809, two men were born
00:46 on either side of the Atlantic Ocean who would go
00:49 on to profoundly affect the world.
00:52 In Kentucky on that day was born the man who would go on
00:55 to become the 16th President of the United States of
00:58 America - Abraham Lincoln - the man who would sign the
01:01 emancipation proclamation and lead the nation through the
01:04 turmoil of the Civil War.
01:06 And on that very same day, in Shewsbury, England, Charles
01:11 Darwin entered the world.
01:13 Now although he was far from the first person to propose
01:16 the idea of evolution, Darwin went on to become known as
01:19 the Father of Evolution.
01:21 He came to view what he saw in the natural world as being
01:26 explainable by natural processes, and in 1859 he
01:30 published the book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of
01:36 Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured
01:40 Races In the Struggle for Life".
01:43 It was a book that shook the world.
01:46 Prior to Darwin, the western world was "largely" a
01:51 creationist world.
01:53 But today, things are very different.
01:56 Gallup polls reveal that while nearly half of
02:00 Americans believe in creationism, 32% believe in
02:04 evolution guided by God, and 15% believe in atheistic
02:10 evolution.
02:11 TV scientist Bill Nye - to quote CNN - "slammed
02:15 creationism", saying that if people ignored evolutionary
02:20 theory their worldview became "crazy", and he urged adults
02:25 not to teach the Biblical teaching of creation to their
02:28 children.
02:29 So, what can a person safely believe?
02:32 The Bible begins with the words "In the beginning God
02:36 created the heaven and the earth."
02:38 But a lot of people don't agree.
02:40 I recently traveled to Petersburg in Northern
02:43 Kentucky, near Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit the Creation
02:46 Museum, and I spoke with scientist Dr Terry Mortenson
02:50 about creation and evolution.
02:54 I began by asking Dr Mortenson where the idea came
02:57 from that the Earth is millions of years old.
03:00 TM: The idea of millions of years did not come from the
03:05 rocks and the fossils.
03:06 It came from certain assumptions that were used to
03:09 interpret the rocks and the fossils and those assumptions
03:12 came out of antibiblical world views, Deism, Atheism,
03:17 where people rejected the Biblical view of history.
03:20 In contrast, for the first 1800 years of church history
03:24 and for 1400 years before that among the Jews, they
03:28 took the Bible as the revelation of the Creator,
03:32 the early chapters of Genesis as true history, and so the
03:36 date of 6000 years roughly comes from the chronological
03:42 information given in Genesis.
03:43 JB You said that we didn't get from Creationism to
03:47 Evolution because somebody made a startling scientific
03:50 discovery.
03:51 How did we get here?
03:52 TM: many people coming out of the enlightenment rejected
03:56 the Bible and they began to say: We need to explain
04:00 everything by time, chance and the laws of nature.
04:03 And so they started looking at the rocks.
04:06 They looked at the rock layers and made an assumption
04:11 that there's no way that a global flood could produce
04:15 what we are looking.
04:16 I mean these rock layers are very thick.
04:19 It must have taken millions of years to deposit those.
04:22 Well, they were making an assumption: 1) that they knew
04:25 what a global flood could do.
04:26 They were just assuming.
04:28 They had not done scientific experiments to say you know,
04:32 you can't produce this particular kind of geological
04:35 formation in a catastrophic flood.
04:38 JB So what's science, or good science or responsible
04:40 science?
04:41 TM Well, the word "science" in English comes from the
04:44 Latin word for science, and originally it just meant
04:48 knowledge.
04:49 And so before the modern scientific age, theology was
04:53 a science.
04:54 In fact, it was called the queen of science, the queen
04:59 of knowledge.
05:00 But in the wake of the enlightenment and the
05:04 development of modern science, science became
05:07 associated with repeatable experiments and the
05:10 development of technology and so we started to build steam
05:14 engines, and railroads and electricity and those kinds
05:19 of things and what happened in the 18th and 19th Century
05:23 was what we can call the science of geology began to
05:30 develop and it was a different kind of science,
05:33 because it wasn't reproducing things in the lab, it was
05:37 looking at things out there in the world and trying to
05:39 reconstruct the unobserved past.
05:42 and so, for example, just a concrete example, John Wesley
05:45 Powell was the first geologist to go into the
05:49 Grand Canyon back in the 1860's.
05:52 Well, he went into the canyon already an evolutionist and
05:55 believing in millions of years.
05:57 He believed that the rocks were the result of slow,
06:01 gradual deposition over long, long periods of time.
06:04 So when he went into the Grand Canyon and saw these
06:08 massive layers and he saw the muddy Colorado River going
06:12 through this huge canyon, he just began to immediately
06:16 think: "Well, slow, gradual deposition laid down these
06:19 layers, and the Colorado River has just been flowing
06:22 for millions of years to carve this canyon.
06:26 [Music] JB So why should people believe Creation from
06:29 a scientific point of view?
06:31 TM ...
06:32 is there evidence in the rocks that point to this
06:37 global flood?
06:38 I'll have more in just a moment.
06:53 [Music] In Matthew 4:4, the Word of God says, "It is
06:56 written: Man shall not live by bread alone but by every
07:00 word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
07:02 Every Word is a one-minute Bible-based daily devotional
07:06 presented by Pastor John Bradshaw and designed
07:09 especially for busy people like you.
07:12 Look for Every Word on selected networks or watch it
07:17 on-line everyday on our website, itiswritten.com.
07:20 Receive a daily spiritual boost.
07:23 Watch Every Word.
07:24 You'll be glad you did.
07:27 This is It Is Written, I'm John Bradshaw, and today
07:30 we're discussion creation and evolution with Dr Terry
07:33 Mortenson from the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky.
07:37 I think we both know that it's common for people today
07:39 to view the world as being millions and millions of
07:42 years old, and to look at the Grand Canyon as something
07:44 that was produced over long ages of time.
07:47 I asked Dr Mortenson how in view of the science that he
07:55 can go to the Grand Canyon and see an altogether
07:58 different picture.
07:59 TM Well, it's because I'm going in with an eye witness
08:03 testimony.
08:04 And so when an evolutionist goes into the Grand Canyon,
08:07 it's not even a question on the radar, could a global
08:12 flood be responsible for what I'm looking at?
08:15 Whereas when I go in that eye witness testimony of the
08:18 Creator given to us in the Book of Genesis is in the
08:23 mind and we're looking ...
08:28 is there evidence in the rocks that point to this
08:30 global flood?
08:31 JB Give me a scientific explanation for the Grand
08:36 Canyon.
08:37 TM Well, there's a number of things that we show people
08:40 when we go into the canyon.
08:42 One is a feature that's called "Cross-bedding."
08:45 you have very strong evidence that that very thick layer
08:49 was laid down under an enormous amount of water,
08:53 moving at a good speed.
08:54 There is another feature that we show them.
08:57 They're called Nautiloids.
08:59 They are fossils that are like an ice cream cone, a
09:04 pointed ice cream cone.
09:06 And they're related to squid.
09:09 They have a head sticking out of the cone, and there's
09:14 about a 7 foot thick layer in the red wall limestone that
09:20 is about 400 feet thick that is just filled with these,
09:24 and they've been spotted in different places, all the way
09:28 through this layer, all the way up near Las Vegas.
09:32 There's an estimated billion or so of these creatures
09:36 buried in this one thin layer and Steve Austin, a Ph.D.
09:41 geologist did some research on them and he took a compass
09:45 and a GPS and he plotted where he found them all along
09:50 this layer in the Grand Canyon.
09:53 He noted their orientation.
09:55 I think 15% of them are buried in an upright position
09:58 with their point down.
10:01 He noted that they are not all just higally pigally in
10:03 all directions, but there's a general indication ...
10:08 I can't remember if it indicates a flow from the
10:11 Southwest to the Northeast or Southeast to the Northwest,
10:13 but what he argues in a paper which he presented to the
10:20 National Park Service, and they were very interested,
10:23 the geologists, was that this was a massive catastrophic
10:28 event, mass burial of these creatures, and that helps to
10:35 explain the orientation and that these cones are in an
10:41 upright position, because you wouldn't expect the creature
10:43 to just die a natural death and go down and sink into the
10:46 ocean floor and just stand there perfectly upright for
10:50 hundreds or thousands of years waiting to slowly get
10:52 settled.
10:54 Another feature that we show a couple of places is the
10:57 folding of rock.
10:59 Now you can bend solid rock under high temperature and
11:02 pressure but when you do, you metamorphose or you change
11:07 the structure of the rock but in these examples that we
11:10 show, the rock stays exactly the same character all the
11:14 way through the bend.
11:15 JB Many people have seen this on the sides of roads, that
11:16 type of figure, where you get layers that fold and this is
11:19 what you're talking about, right?
11:21 TM Right JB OK And so what do you see when you look at
11:27 these legs?
11:29 TM Well, what that shows ...
11:30 JB Doesn't it show ...
11:31 taking the Evolutionist viewpoint, doesn't it show,
11:33 well, this one laid down over 150 million years, and then
11:37 the next one came, because this is what modern science
11:39 typically teaches, correct?
11:40 TM Yes.
11:41 JB That they laid down over millions of years.
11:43 TM But it wouldn't lay down the layers so that it all
11:46 flowed the same way and if the rock layer is being
11:53 deposited slowly, and then you had an earthquake, which
11:56 is what would cause the movement ...
11:59 JB Right TM ...
11:59 it would break the rock or if there was enough stuff above,
12:05 it would, with the heat and the pressure, would allow it
12:08 to bend, but it would transform the character of
12:10 the rock in the bend, and what we see doesn't fit that
12:15 at all.
12:16 What it fits is the conclusion that those rock
12:19 layers were bent when they were still relatively soft
12:23 and moist, shortly after they were deposited, and then the
12:27 northeast end of the Grand Canyon you have the Kaibab up
12:30 where the whole pile of sediments, which the
12:34 evolutionists say represents 300 million years of time,
12:37 the whole pile is bent the same direction, which
12:40 indicates strongly to creation geologists that the
12:43 whole pile was still relatively wet and moist and
12:47 soft.
12:48 JB See, you've got me convinced.
12:51 And as I listen to you, I say to myself: Why doesn't
12:55 everybody believe this?
12:57 TM Well, I come back to the Bible, because that informs
12:59 my understanding of the World and the Bible says that all
13:02 of us are sinners.
13:04 We're in rebellion against our Creator and Paul says in
13:10 the book of Romans, Chapter 1 and 2, he says that the whole
13:13 Creation bears witness to the existence and at least some
13:17 of the attributes are characteristics of God and in
13:20 Chapter 2, he says that God has written his moral law in
13:24 the heart of every person.
13:25 Our conscience tells us we either did that right or we
13:28 did it wrong and what Paul says in Romans 1 is that
13:32 people, we all do this to a greater or lesser extent.
13:36 We push down the truth.
13:37 We suppress that truth because we don't want to deal
13:42 with God.
13:43 We don't want to deal with our sin.
13:47 You know, there's a lot of discussion today about
13:49 Intelligent Design, and people saying there's strong
13:51 evidence for a designer, and I agree with that, but it's
13:55 fairly safe to entertain the idea of a designer as long as
14:00 you don't say who the designer is.
14:02 It could be aliens in outer space.
14:04 Well, it doesn't matter.
14:05 I can live my life the way I want, but to consider a
14:10 global flood and a young earth, you're now face to
14:15 face with the reality of a God that the Bible describes
14:19 is not only loving and merciful and patient, but
14:23 Holy and just.
14:26 So if a person is not prepared to really face that
14:30 truth, they're going to suppress the truth.
14:33 They're going to find any other explanation to evade
14:38 that.
14:39 JB Which leads me to my next question.
14:41 It's not just Atheists who embrace evolution, even
14:43 Christians, even Christian teachers and preachers.
14:45 Even Christian academics.
14:46 TM Yep JB who claim to believe the Bible.
14:48 The Pope came out and said that evolution and at least
14:53 how he interpreted the Word of God, were not mutually
14:56 exclusive.
14:58 How is that?
14:59 TM If we believe the Bible is the Word of God, then we need
15:02 to carefully look at what it says.
15:05 And I find that a lot of Christians, including
15:07 Academics, who say: You know, the age of the earth doesn't
15:10 matter, or you know, you can even accept that God evolved
15:16 the body of Adam from an ape, and then he breathed into
15:19 that and that became Adam.
15:21 What is really disturbing to me, John, is that as I read
15:25 their writings, I don't see them carefully handling the
15:29 actual Biblical text on the key verses.
15:33 So it's easy to wave my hands and say there's no conflict
15:38 between this view and the Bible if I don't look
15:40 carefully at the text.
15:42 JB Is it possible to bring the teachings of creation and
15:47 evolution?
15:49 TM Not if you're really paying attention to what the
15:52 evolutionists say and what the Bible says.
15:54 Back with more in a moment.
16:08 [Music] It Is Written is dedicated to sharing the
16:10 gospel around the world.
16:11 To discover more about It is Written, I invite you to
16:14 visit our website: itiswritten.com and browse
16:17 the dozens of pages that describe what we do and how
16:20 we do it.
16:21 Let's get to know each other better.
16:24 Visit our website: itiswritten.com today.
16:27 Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written, where we're
16:30 looking today at creation and evolution.
16:33 I spoke with Dr Terry Mortenson at the Creation
16:35 Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and I asked him if
16:39 it's possible to bring together the teachings of
16:42 creation and evolution.
16:45 TM Not if you're really paying attention to what the
16:48 evolutionists say and what the Bible says.
16:51 JB There's another very common argument in favor of evolution
16:55 and against Biblical creation that I want to ask you about.
17:01 That's carbon dating.
17:03 TM Carbon dating ...
17:05 there are various dating methods using radioactive
17:08 isotopes.
17:08 Carbon 14 is one but carbon dating is never used to date
17:12 rocks.
17:14 It's used to date former living things where there's
17:16 carbon in them, so the maximum age you could date
17:19 something with carbon 14 is about 80 thousand years.
17:23 So, they use other methods.
17:25 They look at....OK, well, how many uranium atoms and how
17:28 many lead atoms are there in the rock?
17:31 We have observed for 100 years that uranium decays
17:36 into lead at this X rate.
17:39 They assume that it has always decayed at that rate
17:42 but the half-life for uranium to lead is 4.5 billion years.
17:44 So, they didn't observe it all that time.
17:47 They've only observed it for 100 years and then they have
17:49 extrapolated on the basis of the assumption of a constant
17:53 rate.
17:54 JB Well, is that not a fair assumption?
17:55 TM It could be except that we have creation scientists who
18:01 have done a lot of research on this area.
18:03 They start with the eyewitness of the Creator who
18:07 says that the creation is only a few thousand years old
18:11 and there was a global flood and then they go out and they
18:15 look at the rocks.
18:16 They've taken rock samples and they look for things.
18:20 They ask questions about the rocks.
18:22 They probe in certain areas because they are starting
18:26 with that eyewitness and they found a lot of good evidence
18:29 that the decay rates have not been constant in the past,
18:32 that there were orders of magnitude faster and if that
18:35 were the case, that would shrink those millions of
18:38 years dates to thousands.
18:40 JB Dramatically.
18:41 TM They used Carbon 14 to date coal.
18:44 These are dated anywhere from, I think, about 35
18:47 million to 245 million years old, and they dated them with
18:51 carbon 14 and the dates they got back for all of the ten
18:58 samples at different levels and supposedly different ages
19:02 was all about the same.
19:06 I think it was about 58 thousand years.
19:09 Now, the creationists don't believe that's the real age
19:11 of the coal because they were using still the same
19:15 naturalistic assumptions that the evolutionists were using.
19:18 They believe that the flood would have a huge impact on
19:21 carbon dating.
19:23 They also dated some diamonds.
19:25 The rock layer that enclosed the diamonds was something
19:28 like 2 billion years old.
19:29 They dated the diamonds, and the dates for the diamonds
19:34 with carbon 14 was only several tens of thousands of
19:38 years.
19:39 JB So even though that's still older than a young
19:41 earth, it's radically different from the assumption
19:44 that one would ...
19:45 TM And it's saying: How do you get a diamond completely
19:48 enclosed in a rock that is 2 million years old and the
19:51 diamond is only 50,000 years old.
19:54 There's something wrong here.
19:56 They've dated rock layers in the Grand Canyon.
19:59 Their lava flows over the top edge of the north rim and the
20:03 south rim that are dated by some methods to be older than
20:07 lava deposits down at the bottom of the canyon that are
20:12 supposedly at least 300 million years older than the
20:16 lava flows at the top.
20:18 JB So what do we deduce from this about carbon dating?
20:21 TM These dating methods are not telling us the true age
20:23 of the rocks.
20:25 They are giving us erroneous dates because of several key
20:30 assumptions that the evolutionists use to
20:35 interpret what they see.
20:37 So, they take their sample and they get uranium and lead
20:39 atoms.
20:40 That doesn't tell them the age.
20:43 They have to plot this on a chart and then they have to
20:45 interpret what they are looking at so that the
20:47 uranium and the lead doesn't tell you the age of the rock
20:50 by itself.
20:51 It has to be interpreted and the interpretation is very
20:55 much influenced by the assumptions about the past.
20:59 JB The flood.
21:01 TM Yep.
21:02 JB The flood in Noah's day.
21:03 The Bible talks about it.
21:04 It's very clear.
21:05 For a Creationist, the flood answers a lot of questions.
21:08 The Grand Canyon, the layers, we look at those as being
21:10 laid down by floods quickly.
21:11 Give me some reasons, quickly, why we can believe
21:13 that there was a flood.
21:14 TM Okay, well, let me start with the Biblical because
21:16 there are a lot of Christians who have accepted the
21:18 millions of years who believe that Noah's flood was just an
21:22 extensive but localized flood in the Middle East but the
21:26 Biblical text from Genesis 6-8 is clearly describing a
21:30 global flood.
21:31 If the flood was just in the Middle East, no need to build
21:33 an ark because the animals and the birds outside the
21:35 flood zone don't care and they could repopulate the
21:38 whole area if all the creatures died.
21:41 And God could have just told Noah to go on a vacation to
21:44 Europe.
21:45 No need to build this huge boat.
21:48 So the purpose of the ark ...
21:50 the fact that the Bible says "all of the high mountains
21:53 under the heavens are covered" and since water
21:56 seeks a level plain, the only way you are going to cover
22:00 the high mountains is a global flood.
22:03 Now, the Bible doesn't say that the Himalayas were in
22:05 existence before the flood.
22:07 The Himalayas are actually the result of the flood and
22:12 the mountain ranges, the major mountain ranges, are
22:15 all geologically recent.
22:17 They are made of sedimentary rocks that were once flat and
22:21 were thrust up so we don't have to assume that you had
22:25 to have 29,000 feet of water added to the ocean.
22:28 So, there is a number of factors.
22:31 In Genesis it says that all creatures in whose nostrils
22:37 is the breath of life perished.
22:41 And then there's the rainbow promise in Genesis 9 that
22:43 never again would God flood the world with a global
22:46 flood.
22:47 JB So biblically speaking, there is no way around the
22:49 flood.
22:50 TM No.
22:51 It was global and it was catastrophic.
22:53 JB and it's fundamental to the Bible.
22:55 TM Absolutely.
22:56 Geologically, we see massive layers, massive
23:00 The Deccan Traps, for example, in India, there's a massive
23:04 lava flow, on a scale that we don't see today
23:07 and there are other places where just huge flows of lava
23:12 that changed into solid rock.
23:16 That fits with the Bible.
23:18 The Bible says that the fountains of the great deep
23:20 burst open and that language we can study how those words
23:24 are used in the Bible and it's clearly speaking of
23:26 tectonic breaking of the crust of the earth.
23:31 We see sedimentary layers that are continent wide or
23:35 nearly so that are just massively extensive.
23:39 These are not the sediments of a river delta.
23:42 They're just too extensive.
23:44 We see evidence of sea creatures buried in these
23:48 sediments.
23:49 We see mass graveyards where there are millions of
23:52 creatures buried together in high concentrations with all
23:54 kinds of creatures buried together.
23:56 In many, we see land animals and sea creatures buried
23:58 together.
23:59 They are not living I mean, they are not buried where
24:02 they lived.
24:07 They aren't even buried where they died.
24:09 They are buried where they are buried and as we
24:12 mentioned earlier, we see cross-bedding which indicates
24:16 turbulent flow of water.
24:18 The very fact that we find fossils speaks of a global
24:22 flood because if you have a creature die like around
24:25 here, we hunt deer all year round.
24:27 I tell people most of the year our people hunt with
24:30 their car ...
24:33 laughter ...
24:34 and they slam into a deer.
24:35 If you leave the deer on the side of the road and the
24:37 highway department doesn't come to pick it up,
24:39 scavengers and micro decay organisms will erase the
24:42 evidence.
24:43 So to make a fossil, you have to bury that creature fast
24:46 and we see evidence of creatures being buried alive.
24:50 There are creatures with other creatures fossilized in
24:52 their stomachs so they didn't even get to finish digesting
24:56 lunch.
24:57 There are fossilized worms.
24:59 There are fossilized animal manure.
25:02 You know, a cow pie doesn't lay on the field for years in
25:07 pristine condition.
25:08 So there's folding in the rocks and this speaks of
25:15 catastrophic processes on a global scale.
25:19 JB It's interesting Christians, very often people
25:24 who believe in Creation are dismissed as not thinking.
25:27 But it seems to me that if you really think about how we
25:31 got here, Creation, a flood, divine intervention is the
25:36 only suitable, satisfactory explanation for the world we
25:41 see around us.
25:42 TM The more I read, the more I study, the more persuaded I
25:46 am of the truth of the Bible.
25:49 JB Dr. Mortenson, thank you.
25:50 Thanks for taking the time to talk with us.
25:53 TM Good to be with you, John.
25:56 JB Thank you.
25:57 Creation or evolution?
25:58 I'd like to offer you a free book that makes this subject
26:02 clear.
26:03 It's called "Out of Thin Air", produced by It Is
26:06 Written, and written by former ministry speaker Shawn
26:09 Boonstra.
26:10 It's an excellent resource that makes the subject of
26:13 creation and evolution very, very clear.
26:16 Get your free copy of "Out of Thin Air" by calling right
26:20 now, 1-800-253-3000.
26:21 Ask for: Out of Thin Air.
26:24 Or you can write to It Is Written, Box O, Thousand
26:27 Oaks, CA 91359, and we will mail a copy to your address
26:32 in North America.
26:33 And remember: It Is Written is a faith-based ministry
26:37 made possible by viewers like you.
26:40 Thank you for your support.
26:43 Creation and evolution.
26:45 The Word of God points us to a God who is the God of
26:48 creation.
26:50 Together, let's pray to that God right now.
26:52 Would you pray with me?
26:54 Our Father in heaven, I thank you the Bible states with
26:57 great confidence that in the beginning, God created.
27:01 And I'm grateful that you are not only the Creator, but the
27:06 Re-Creator.
27:07 David prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, oh, God, and
27:11 renew a right spirit within me," and I pray now that you
27:16 would be our Creator and Re-Creator and create in me,
27:20 in each of us, that right spirit that you want us to
27:24 have.
27:26 Bless and keep us, Lord, and be in our lives the God of
27:29 creation and Re-creation.
27:31 And I thank you today in Jesus' name, Amen.
27:39 [Music]
27:52 Thank you for joining me today.
27:54 I look forward to seeing you again next time.
27:56 Until then, remember: It is written: Man
27:59 shall not live by bread alone but by every word
28:02 that proceeds from the mouth of God.


Home

Revised 2015-02-05