Author Archives: Taryn

About Taryn

Taryn is a mum of four, working through her Masters of Theology. She also has a Diploma of Biblical Studies (Biblical Studies), a Diploma of Arts (English Literature) and Bachelor of Theology and is a freelance writer and editor.

5 Reasons Why You Should Celebrate Creation Day

The Bible, as we have seen, is full of beautiful things to say about God’s creation, and is clear that humanity is called to love and nurture it as part of our earthly responsibilities.

The focus of Creation Day is to take the time to find ways to praise God and his created order. This includes animals, plants, the solar system, humanity and the environment – all the parts of the created universe. The earth is an incredible and complex place and is really quite magnificent. It contains millions of vibrant and complex ecosystems which support the ideal conditions for many forms of life. It is a wholly remarkable, intricate created work of art that is certainly worthy of our attention.

There are many ways to praise God’s creation but the most popular ones include taking the time to reflect on God’s creation, and taking actions to help his creation. As Christians, we are called by God to speak out, act and advocate for things which affect God’s creation. One of the ways that we can act is by celebrating Creation Day as a national holiday.

I think if you really think about it, you will see that reasons to celebrate Creation Day are a no brainer. But…just in case you need further convincing, here is a list of five reasons why you should celebrate Creation Day;

REASON 1 – Because Creation Deserves It

For many churches, biblical holidays and themes are the perfect cause for a special celebration.

It is quite common for churches to dedicate services to these specific themes. Annually, most churches commemorate Christ’s Crucifixion in a Good Friday service; celebrate His resurrection in an Easter Sunday service or celebrate Jesus’ incarnation at Christmas. Some churches even dedicate monthly services to certain themes such as ‘Communion Sunday’ or ‘Baptism Sunday’.

Despite all of these fantastic reasons to celebrate, we fail to dedicate a service to the doctrine of creation, and set aside a ‘Creation Day’ to worship the creative work of our God. Creation is one of the main themes in the bible and yet we don’t seem give it the same special treatment that these events receive.

The bottom line? If a special service is good enough for Ash Wednesday and Christmas Eve Candlelight then it’s good enough for creation.

REASON 2 – Because The Ten Commandments Honors Creation

Creation is mentioned several times in the Decalogue.

In Exodus 20, we are told;

“…the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns…

…for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.”

The fact that the Ten Commandments mentions creation, and places such an emphasis on the Sabbath indicates a need for us to honor it also by dedicating one of these the Sabbath days to reflect on, and act upon, God’s creation.

REASON 3 – Because It Forces Us to Set Aside Time To Act

Creation Day not only offers an opportunity to reflect on God’s creation. With some planning and passion you can also take advantage of the special day to do something which serves creation.

Some ideas might include:

Holding a Creation Day themed service at your church
Handing out flyers addressing a specific issue
Changing the light bulbs in your home to eco-bulbs
Starting a compost heap in your backyard
Hosting a coffee afternoon and serve organic food and fair trade coffee using re-usable plates, cups and napkins
Inviting a guest speaker to your church to talk about relevant issues
Planning or take part in a community service project such as a local clean up
Cleaning up the church grounds and establish some eco-friendly aids such as setting up barrels to catch rain water
Going on a hike at a local trail
Holding a Creation Day festival at your church and ask local environment groups to set up informative booths or local produce growers to sell their products
Holding a church service outdoors

REASON 4 – Because It’s The Least We Can Do!

It goes without saying, but celebrating Creation Day is really the very least that we can do. I think we can all agree that without God’s gift of creation, we would not be here. I can’t think of a better to reason to celebrate Creation Day than because of our sheer existence!

As well as being able to participate in creation, God also gave us the ability to truly engage in it. God could have simply put us here with the need to eat to sustain ourselves but without giving us the opportunity to really savor our food. But he didn’t! He bestowed on us the gift of taste which allows us to enjoy eating. We have eyes which see colour and nature, the ability to smell food and flowers, the ability to hear the sounds of animals, and touch so we can feel the world around us. Creation is the gift that keeps on giving.

Creation gives us cause to celebrate each and every day and at the very least, and it deserves one special day where we pay tribute to this amazing privilege we have been given.

REASON 5 – Because Through Creation God Will Redeem The World

In Christ’s life, death and resurrection, humanity and the entire cosmos was brought back into right relationship with God.

In Genesis we saw that God looked at his creation and declared it to be good. Created with inherent goodness, humanity’s fall into sin meant that creation’s order was disrupted. Since the fall people have continued to misuse the earth, participating in a process that has caused deterioration in many areas of the world, and of life.

God’s overarching redemptive plan for the world is to restore his creation to its original goodness. We must dedicate ourselves to participating in the redemption that God has planned for his creation. Pledging ourselves to a thorough and committed participation in Creation Day is a great step towards caring for God’s redemptive purposes.

So what are you waiting for? Start celebrating creation!

Celebrate the trees, the animals, the birds, the fish, the flowers, the mountains and the people. Praise God by enhancing your appreciation for his creative work and celebrate Creation Day.

You might start by signing the petition to establish Creation Day as a national holiday. To sign, go here.

Last week we looked at the theme of creation throughout scripture, from the creation of the earth in Genesis to the establishment of God’s new, eschatological creation which is yet to come.

If you missed the article, you can read it here

The Bible: From Creation to New Creation

Though the Bible is filled with many different books and authors, it tells a cohesive story about the history of the world, functioning within God’s holistic and redemptive purpose – from creation, to new creation. God’s creative activity unfolds throughout scripture, providing a meta narrative that reveals our God and his plan for the entire created order.

The Bible begins and ends with creation, and ultimately uses creation as a way of reflecting on the nature of God, of humanity and of His plan for the cosmos. Scripture affirms that God has been intimately bonded to creation from before the creation of the world, in the now, and through to the ‘not yet’.

Original Creation

One of the most well-known stories in the Bible is the seven day creation of the world seen in Genesis 1. This chapter reveals the creative process and creative nature of God, and sets the foundation for creation as a theme throughout the Old and New Testaments.

Through God’s creative activity, we learn that our God is a God who is actively present within his creation, and who continues to care for and sustain this creation throughout history.

Genesis 2 outlines the creation of the first man and woman, and once again reveals a God who is deeply connected to the earth, so much so that he breathes his own breath into Adam as part of his creative process.

When we come to Genesis 3 we see that all is not well within creation. Though God is seen to be walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, they have forgotten God’s creative generosity and have taken it for granted. In eating from the tree, Adam and Eve set off a chain of events which not only affects their own existence, but unravels the very fabric of the created order. This unravelling will continue to deteriorate until God takes action in Genesis 6.

The Flood

By Genesis 6, the created order has declined into a state of irreparable disrepair, and God feels compelled to take matters into his own hands. Scripture describes God’s grief and regret at having created, and his plans to flood all of creation and remake it through Noah.

In carrying out His plans, God is returning the earth to its pre-creation state of watery chaos that preceded his six day creation process – he is carrying out a systematic reversal of his own creation. This ‘de-creation’ is done by destroying everything in the order that it was created;

The windows of heaven are opened, and the fountains of the deep are released. This parallels Genesis 1 where God separated the water from the land
Noah’s ark is seen as floating on the face of the waters, an echo to God’s spirit which hovers over the face of the waters
Land animals, birds and sea creatures are destroyed
Humans are destroyed
God manifests a wind to blow over the waters, alluding to the breath of life God gives in Genesis 2

Finally, the flood episode ends with a reinstatement of the original creation – God gives Noah and his family directions akin to what he gave Adam in the garden, and even instructs him to “be fruitful and multiply”, an exact replica of the command given to Adam and Eve.

After establishing a convenant with Noah, God offers him a sign in the form of a piece of creation – a rainbow.

The Torah and Deuteronomistic History

God’s desire to renew his created order is bound up with the renewal and recreation of Israel as a nation. The writer of the Torah describes this and acknowledges God as the creator of the earth;

^“Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.”

These first books of the Bible also point to the responsibility that we have as humans to become diligent stewards of creation. Leviticus states that creation is the property of God, and is not to be defiled. Moses, the likely author of Leviticus, even commands that creation itself, including the land, will observe the Sabbath.

In Numbers, the Israelites are told;

“You shall not pollute the land in which you live…. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the LORD dwell among the Israelites.”

…and this mandate is repeated in Deuteronomy.

The Old Testament closes with the Prophets, who urge Israel to come back to their creator and their God. The Prophets also urged God’s people to care for creation, and respect the earth in a way that adequately pays homage to the creator of all things (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Hosea).

The Gospels

John opens with a retelling of Genesis 1.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

This mirrors the words of Genesis, and gives us insight into Jesus’ role in the cosmic order – he himself was a fundamental part of the original creation from the beginning.

Later in John, Jesus is described as having breathed on the disciples, in order for them to receive the Holy Spirit. This has echoes to Genesis 2 where God breathes into Adam.

The Gospels portray Jesus as asserting authority over all of creation – defying natural laws by walking on water, stilling a chaotic storm, multiplying a small amount of fish in order to feed a multitude, raising the dead and defying death himself.

Jesus

John’s passage reflects on Jesus as being integral to the creation of the world. As the New Testament goes on, it become more and more clear that Jesus was not only involved in creation, but is central to it. In this way, we must regard all of creation as thoroughly Christocentric in nature. Paul tells us in Colossians that “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created…”

In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes that:

“…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation…”

The same God who created all things in six days has now established a new creation through Christ. All those who embrace Jesus are now living out of this new creation.

Through Jesus, God reconciles himself to his created order once more, bridging the gaps that were made broken through sin. Christ’s life, death and resurrection do not only affect the human condition, but affect the fundamental order of the entire cosmos.

Groaning Creation

We know from Romans 8 that the entire created order longs for redemption – and that the brokenness established at Eden reverberates throughout the entire natural world.

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God… in hopethat the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

We can see this groaning as early as Genesis 4 when Abel is slain and God tells Cain that:

“The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

The entire created order all looks forward to the restoration of the world through God’s redemptive plan. This includes the stars, the spiders and everything in between!

New Creation

As early as Isaiah, we are told that God will

“…create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”

Revelations confirms this, when John has a vision;

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

Paul also validates this when he writes in Peter that:

“…according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”

The promise of a new creation is a promise which will be fulfilled throughout the entire cosmos.

Tracing the history of the world from creation to new creation helps us to see that creation was never merely a background theme in scriptures – creation is in itself the story of salvation. The entire created order was made, fell from glory, groans in anticipation, became a new creation in Christ and looks forward to the complete and final restoration of the entire cosmos. There is no biblical narrative without creation, and without an understanding of this fundamental theme, we cannot fully grasp the biblical story.

To honor the redemptive purposes of God from creation to new creation, please sign our petition, to establish Creation Day as an officially recognised holiday!

To sign, click here

Scientific Evidence for the Great Flood

“The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep…

…He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth.

Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days.”

A Great Flood

The account of Genesis tell of a monumental flood that describes the earth being plundered by the ‘fountains of the great deep’ when God let loose on his creation. We can only imagine the catastrophic destruction that took place. Modern floods – though devastating to both life and land – pale in comparison to the cosmic demolition that this flood brought about.

Flood Geology is a branch of ‘pseudoscience’ that deals with analysing features of the Earth which have been shaped by the Genesis flood. The scientific community considers flood geology to be ‘myth’ and ‘falsifiable’ because it is seen to contradict mainstream science.

However, mainstream science has provided evidence which reinforces the idea of a global flood, such as is described in the Old Testament.

Evidence For The Flood

-Flood Stories-

The story of Noah’s Ark and the great flood is so famous that even young school aged children are familiar with Noah and his ‘Arky Arky’.

What children and some adults aren’t aware of, is that ancient flood legends exist in every corner of the earth. Many of these stories contain elements that are common to all of them:

the construction of a boat in advance
one family that is spared
some amount of animals that are kept out of danger
a rainbow
the release of birdlife to determine if the water has subsided and the destruction of humanity

These are all examples of common themes that appear. When a famous Babylonian text – The Epic of Gilgamesh – is compared to the story in Genesis 6-9, the similarities in the two flood stories are remarkable.

The overwhelming consistency amongst these traditions indicates that they have derived from the same origin. In other words, after one global flood, an oral tradition developed which was passed down through a kind of ‘Chinese whispers’. These stories were eventually written down in different parts of the world, by people living within different cultures. What is left is a mosaic of stories which have different features and nuances, but which ultimately reflect the one event.

Since we know that shortly after the flood was the scattering of languages at Babel, it seems likely that this played a part in the way the story was orally developed and altered as it was passed down through generations.

-The Black Sea-

The Black Sea, located in South-eastern Europe is famous for its concentrated salt level, but scientists are now claiming that it was once a freshwater lake before an enormous flood deluged it.

The most recent proponent of this theory is Robert Ballard – an underwater archaeologist who rose to fame after discovering the underwater wreckage of the Titanic in 1985. Ballard acted from a hunch that The Black Sea must have preserved items from antiquity because of its concentrated salt intensities and lower oxygen levels. When Ballard and his team unearthed an ancient shore line, this was an indication that a catastrophic event took place in the Black Sea.

The volume of water that caused the flood into The Black Sea is said to have been 200 times more than that of Niagara Falls. This caused the original shoreline to plunge underneath hundreds of feet of salt water. This theory is reinforced by the fact that there are layers of freshwater molluscs below the surface of the Black Sea. By carbon dating these shells, Ballard believes the timeline for the flood to have taken place around 5,000 BCE. Further to his findings, is the discovery of a vessel, and one of its crew members in The Black Sea. The ancient shipwreck is said to be perfectly preserved, along with the bones and teeth of the seaman.

-Fossils-

Rock layers all over the world are filled with fossilised marine animals, insects, spiders, amphibians and plants that are buried in places miles above sea level – including the walls of the Grand Canyon and high in the world’s tallest mountain range – the Himalayas.

The presence of these fossils are silent testimonies to the waters that flooded over every continent before being buried in massive flows of sediment as a result of powerful flooding.

Rock layers across every continent also show features that indicate they were deposited very quickly. Some strata within the Grand Canyon show clear signs that sand was deposited by huge water currents in a matter of days. In order for these layers to be deposited so extensively implies a global flooding of the continents.

Of these layers, there are large amounts which show evidence indicating that the rock layers were still wet when deposited. Rocks do not bend; they shatter and break because they are hard. Yet, in whole sequences of rock strata, we find bends without any fractures indicating that the rocks folded and rippled as if they were wet and pliable before setting as hard rock. This is best demonstrated by the Tapeats Sandstone in Grand Canyon which is folded at a right angle without any evidence of breaking.

The only explanation for this is that the layers were laid in rapid succession and buckled while still soft.

What Does This All Mean?

The Bible speaks of the events of Genesis 6-9 as real, authentic events that took place under the divine providence of God, describing a global flood that destroyed all human and animal life, except for that aboard the ark.

If the Bible is the infallible word of God, then it’s not surprising that geological evidence all over the world confirms exactly what we are told happened in the days of Noah. The physical features of the earth and its geological structure clearly indicate an event that was catastrophic, and global in nature. The evidence is undeniable.

If you want to find out more about Creation Day, or help establish Creation Day as a recognized holiday, then head here to sign the petition!

Last week we looked at how dinosaurs fit in with the biblical account, and offered one possible reason for their extinction: the global flood described in Genesis 6-9.

To check out the last article go here.

In the Beginning…Dinosaurs?

Dinosaurs

People have long been fascinated with these almost mythical-like creatures that we know about, only through fossil evidence.

Shows like Walking With Dinosaurs have further driven our engrossing awe of these creatures and generations of children all over the world continue to be captivated by the mere sight of them in books, T.V. shows and museums. The 2015 movie release of Jurassic World is already set to be a box office monster, predicted to rake in over $100 million at its opening.

But how do we reconcile these enormous creatures with the biblical account of creation?

Are Dinosaurs in the Bible?

The word dinosaur wasn’t coined until the late 1840s, so it is not surprising that when we look to the bible for the word ‘dinosaur’, we will find only silence. However, we know that “In the beginning….” God created everything – including the beasts of the earth, so dinosaurs were there.

Though we cannot hit our concordance and find pages that feature ‘dinosaurs’, what we do have is references to creatures that look an awful lot like dinosaurs.

Job 40: 15-18 reads;

“Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly. It makes its tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are knit together. Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like bars of iron.”

The passage describes the behemoth as an herbivore with a tail like a tree and limbs like bars of iron. This is a very graphic description of an animal that sounds convincingly dinosaur-like. In Hebrew, ‘Behemoth’ translates to ‘gigantic beast’. Some argue that this passage is referring to a large land animal that we are already familiar with, such as an Elephant or Hippopotamus but neither of these animals, nor any others have a tail like a cedar. At the very least, we can conclude that the ‘behemoth’ is not a normal animal, and certainly does not describe a house cat.

As Job goes on, we are introduced to another creature that is difficult to reconcile with our modern experience: the Leviathan.

”Any hope of capturing it will be disappointed; were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it?…No one is so fierce as to dare to stir it up. Who can stand before it? Who can confront it and be safe? —under the whole heaven, who? …I will not keep silence concerning its limbs, or its mighty strength, or its splendid frame.”

It is interesting that the Leviathan is introduced in the chapter following the entry of the behemoth. Both the creatures being introduced here are described as enormous, frightful creatures that reveal the potent capacity of God’s creative activity.

The word ‘dragon’ also appears a number of times in the Old Testament. Since there was no language to describe dinosaurs before the nineteenth century, creation scientists have come to conclude that dinosaurs were called dragons, and it is to dinosaurs, that these passages refer. A few examples include;

Isaiah 27:1
Jeremiah 51:34
Psalms 74:13
Nehemiah 2:13
Ezekiel 29:3

The Bible is not the only place where we can find reference to dinosaurs. Many other ancient sources mention dragons, including;

The Epic of Gilgamesh (dating back to 2000 BCE) features a protagonist who has to slay a dragon
Alexander the Great and his army reported sightings of huge hissing reptiles
Dragons are rife within Chinese tradition
England’s story of ‘St George’ revolved around a man that slew a dragon who dwelt in a cave
Early drawings carved on rock depict dinosaurs. The most notable are located in Angkor Wat.

What Happened to the Dinosaurs?

From the perspective of the biblical accounts, the simplest explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs is by attributing their demise to the flood described in Genesis 6 and 7.

Some creationists believe that dinosaurs accompanied the other animals onto the ark, but the changed environment in the post-flood world meant that they could not survive, and so they slowly died out.

Be sure to subscribe, and head here to sign our petition to establish Creation Day as a national holiday.

How Old is the Earth and Humankind?

What Does Science Say?

From a scientific point of view, the earth has been functioning for over four billion years. This age is based onevidence obtained from ‘radiometric age dating’ which measures radioactive decay of meteorite material and lunar samples in order to calculate a minimum age for the earth. Scientific evidence obtained from African fossils suggests that humanity, as we know it today, has only been walking the earth for around 200,000 years, making humankind a very small part, and rather late addition to, the earth’s history.

What Does the Bible Say?

If we are to pose this question from a biblical point of view, one might easily form a very different answer. The Bible describes man as having been made on the sixth day of creation. According to this account, humanity was created almost at the beginning of the earth’s timeline, rather than later. The biblical account also perceives the creation of human beings to be a significant event in the creative order, rather than an evolving afterthought. If we are to subscribe to the biblical timeline rather than the scientific timeline of evolution, we may find that our world is younger than we have been told.

Evidence for a Young Earth

Much speculation abounds regarding the age of the earth. Much of this is driven by the idea that we can gauge more reliable evidence for the age of the earth from the Bible. According to this idea, Genesis provides an accurate, reliable account of creation which sees God create the earth and humanity over a period of six 24-hour days. Creationists also claim that scientific estimations for the age of the earth are filled with flaws and errors.

Here are just a few examples of where scientific methods may be falling short;

• Dinosaur bones have been found to contain red blood cells, which could not last more than a few thousand years. This dates dinosaurs well ahead of the 65 million years ago that science typically sets them as having inhabited the earth.

• Helium is escaping into the atmosphere due to radioactive decay, but the total amount is not reconcilable with an earth age of four billion years.

• The moon is slowly withdrawing from the earth at a rate of around 4cm per year. If the moon had begun in direct contact with the earth, it would only have taken just over a billion years to reach its current distance from the earth. This gives the moon a maximum possible age that is too young to be in keeping with scientific age assumptions about the moon, and with radiometric dates assigned to moon rocks.

• Salt is filling the sea at a faster rate than it is discharging. This means the sea is not salty enough to be billions of years old.

Is the Earth be Younger Than We Thought?

Young earth creationists acknowledge that they cannot prove the age of the earth using any scientific methods, but what they do encourage is questioning of so-called scientific ‘data’, and the reliability of scientific methods in order to produce this data. Those who advocate for a young earth recognise the limitations that dating methods have, and acknowledge that all attempts at age-dating are guesswork, at best.

What young earth creationists promote is the use biblical genealogies as a method in which to attempt to date the earth’s lifespan. Those who subscribe to this view regard the Biblical accounts as historically accurate, thus forming a reliable record that we can use to understand our earth and its story.

Studies have shown that almost half of adults living in the United States claim to hold the view that God created humanity as we know it today, within the last 10,000 years.

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts, and be sure to sign the petition to establish Creation Day as a national holiday!

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