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CREATION AND THE NARROW WAY

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, Evolution/Creation, FAITH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS — Leave a comment
December 27, 2017

Have you been intimidated into thinking that if you were to confess to believing that God created, you would be the odd one out, and the object of universal scorn and derision?

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A Gallup poll conducted In May of 2012 found that in the United States forty-six percent of Americans hold the view that God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years. About a third of Americans believe that humans evolved, but with God’s guidance; 15% say humans evolved, but that God had no part in the process. More broadly, some 78% of Americans today believe that God had a hand in the development of humans in some way, just slightly less than the percentage who felt this way 30 years ago http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/Hold-Creationist-View-Human-Origins.aspx

I’M PROUD TO BE A WACKO

In the UK, my country of origin, it’s a commonly held view that too many Americans are “religious”, and that the US is the home of the Christian Fundamentalist wacko. It’s therefore not surprising to Brits that so many Americans are, in their view, “ignorant of the facts”, as represented in the Gallup poll. I’ll put it a different way: the United States as a whole has not abandoned its faith in the Biblical God while much of Europe has.

Despite all the determined efforts of evolutionists, atheists, the media and many in the education establishment to indoctrinate everyone into the ways of naturalism, many Americans have a lot more savvy and independence of thought when it comes to faith, and aren’t so easily swayed or brainwashed by those determined to get rid of the Christian God. On top of this, freedom-of-speech laws allow creationists and intelligent design ministries to thrive in the US, whereas in Western Europe there’s far more legal and political opposition to such ministries.

The common and caustic charge that creationists are ignorant and stupid is just a smoke screen-an obfuscation (my new favorite word) designed to hide the facts. While they’re fewer in number (because there’s resistance to their hiring and because they don’t get massive government funding and secular media backing as the priests of Darwin do) creationists are in many cases at least as well educated, credentialed and informed as evolutionists. It’s a matter of world-view, not one of who’s most intelligent.

Neither does a majority of scientists in a position of influence prove right: it only helps to dictate who will have the upper hand in public exposure and debate. Ultimately one with God is a majority. The earth belongs to God and not to his deniers, who are, after all, only tenants.

There’s a culture war going on: a spiritual battle for individual hearts and minds. It seems sometimes like the “nays” have it when it comes to God and creation, and that’s intimidating to many people. But those of us who’ve chosen to follow the clear evidence in nature, in scripture, and in empirical science (rather than philosophy without evidence posing as science) see it God’s way. We recognize that Jesus Christ said:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13,14 ESV).

 

 

 

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DOES OBAMACARE?

Filed under: Politics, Uncategorized — Leave a comment
June 13, 2018

Obamacare? Who did Obama care about…or for that matter the rest of the Democrats or half the Republicans?

I have a bill for $2085 for not buying Mr. Obama’s insurance last year. I’m not well off, and I’m certainly less well-off now. Thanks. Mr President, but I don’t need or want your kind of care.

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THE END OF JURASSIC WORLD

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, Evolution/Creation, FAITH — Leave a comment
June 11, 2018

Creationists freely recognize the past existence of dinosaurs, and their extinction, just as evolutionists do. The difference in the two views is how, when and why the extinction occurred, but even the “how” part of the story has become increasingly similar in many ways…

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Articles in the “Institute for Creation Research” monthly magazine “Acts and Facts” have helped fuel my interest in and understanding of the demise of the dinosaurs. The articles relate to secular theories for past mass extinctions,  which these days involve cataclysmic events, supposedly millions of years ago. Evolutionists, like creationists, believe that at some time in the past some colossal and profound event or events radically affected life on earth.

Along with stories of earth-changing events are smaller-scale attempts to account for the rich fossil record, such as “dinosaurs falling into swamps” stories which I’ve written about before. I’m referring to fossil evidence demonstrating how dinosaurs, sometimes entire herds of them, drowned in mud together, and how entire schools of whales ended up in the middle of continents. Other extinction theories include such titles as “fatal gene transfer”, and, as I’ve noted before, Gary Larson’s humorous suggestion that they smoked too much.

There are a number of different theories these days as to why the dinosaur died out completely. Perhaps the most well-known is the one in which a huge asteroid, supposedly evidenced by the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico, caused large scale devastation and global poisoning of certain prone species, including the dinosaur. Brian Thomas summarizes the evidence against the theory (note 1).

Smithsonian.com discusses some of the theories which have been proposed in the past in an article titled “THE TOP TEN WEIRDEST DINOSAUR EXTINCTION IDEAS” (see note 4). They then assert that there’s now a short list of generally accepted causes for the demise of the dinosaur:

Today, paleontologists have discerned that most dinosaur lineages disappeared by about 66 million years ago after intense volcanic activity, climate change and a catastrophic asteroid impact triggered one of the worst mass extinctions in our planet’s history.

When I was a small boy (in the dark ages) I had an encyclopedia which contained an “artist’s impression” of dinosaurs fleeing from enormous volcanoes erupting all around them, clearly just about to be buried in lava and rocks. At the same time my science teachers were telling me all about “uniformitarianism”- the popular secular understanding of earth’s history since the time of Charles Lyell until just a few decades ago- perhaps still persisting.It’s also described as “The present is the key to past”. According to this view all processes on earth have always continued at the same pace as we see them happening now, so that f it takes a year for one millimetre of silt to settle in a lake bed, it must have taken an awfully long time for hundreds of feet of it to form-certainly more than the Bible gives it, right?

Image result for dinosaur graveyard

Uniformitarianism has been all but debunked in many ways. In my own part of the world there is abundant evidence of past rapid super-eruptions of lava over thousands of square  miles: not the sort of thing you see every day. More than that, in 1923 geologist  J Harlem Bretz published a paper claiming that the area I now live in was inundated by enormous sudden floods at the end of the last ice-age. He said that the waters were up to 1000 feet deep. and rushed at high speeds down to the ocean, dramatically altering the landscape. You can see the results of rapid and large-scale water erosion for thousands of square miles all around here.

Bretz’ peers were unwilling to accept his proposal for some time, because it smacked too much of the Biblical Flood. Again, it’s not every day you see a thousand feet of water engulfing thousands of square miles of land, so perhaps the present is not always the key to the past.

ICR has noted that evolutionists believe five major catastrophic events have occurred during earth’s history. Some now claim a sixth, while others insist there were three: so much for hard scientific facts (note 3). Incredibly, according to evolutionary scientists, the worlds worst extinction event, the “Permian Extinction”, said bye-bye to 70% of land species and 95% of marine species! (note 2).

Picture Credit: Royal Tyrrell Museum.

CATCHING UP WITH THE BIBLE

What amazes me is that it’s taken this long for our would-be intellectual masters to arrive at the conclusion that enormous, cataclysmic events have transformed our world, because as long as three thousand years ago the Bible already had an explanation for worldwide mass extinctions and rearrangement of the surface of the earth: the global Flood. The reason for the demise of the dinosaurs has always been there for everyone to see. That is, everyone who wanted to see it.

 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind…(Genesis 7:21 ESV).

Physical evidence for the Flood is abundant in rock layers all around the world, where billions of creatures (and colossal amounts of vegetation) are found  to have been rapidly buried, sometimes exquisitely preserved, and in some locations in mass graveyards. Billions-yes, billions of tracks of dinosaurs and many other animals have been found all over the world-tracks made in mud and then buried and fossilized. Interestingly, the tracks commonly appear in straight lines as though these creatures were on their way somewhere in a hurry, not foraging, mating or just living out their lives peacefully in swampy terrain. At the same time, the earth is covered in layers of sediments up to continent size. They are claimed by evolutionists to be the deposits of ancient oceans. Instead, they lend themselves, as does the fossil evidence, far more obviously to the Biblical Flood.

I want to repeat a reference I found on a secular site-not written by a creationist or a believer, which is not uncommon in its descriptions, but is very provocative in relation to the Bible’s Flood account. It’s from an article titled “World’s Largest Dinosaur Graveyard Linked to Mass Death”:

“Scientists have revealed what may be the world’s largest dinosaur graveyard. The dinosaurs may have been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, comparable to today’s hurricanes, which struck what was then a coastal area.  The findings could help solve a mystery concerning why the badlands of western Canada are so rich in dinosaur fossils.“ (note 5).

 

The Flood is recorded not just in the Bible as a catastrophe in earth’s history, but also in various forms in many cultures around the world, including the Mesopotamian culture-the oldest known civilization on earth.

\NOTES

1 http://www.icr.org/article/did-dinosaurs-die-from-impact

2 http://www.icr.org/article/worlds-most-catastrophic-extinction/

3 http://www.icr.org/article/newly-discovered-sixth-extinction-rewrites/

and

https://www.icr.org/article/3973

4 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-top-ten-weirdest-dinosaur-extinction-ideas-23642539/#SVFlLJT2gFsMWZlY.99

5 http://www.livescience.com/8340-world-largest-dinosaur-graveyard-linked-mass-death.html

 

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GETTING A GRIP

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, DEVOTION, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST, The Meaning of Life — Leave a comment
June 2, 2018

One of the hazards to faith, peace and confidence can be the impression that God’s justice is not apparent in the world around us. Those who have no thought for God and who hate truth and justice sometimes seem to be doing very well for themselves, while the rest of us, those who love God and his ways, are not getting a fair shake on life…

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If we start to think God isn’t doing his job, or that he treats us unfairly, or that others are getting a much better deal in life even though they despise what is good, we can easily and quickly sink into bitterness and faithlessness. However, if we really know our God and our Scriptures-the ones on which our faith and hope are built-we should also know the truth of the situation.

David was one who similarly felt, for a time, that the darkness in humanity was triumphing over the righteous. Psalm 73 is an incredible view of David’s fear and bitterness that his enemies and those that hated the ways of God were running the world and getting their way:

From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
    their evil imaginations have no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
    with arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
    and their tongues take possession of the earth (Psalm 73:7-9).

David confessed to us and to God that observing the prosperity of the wicked had almost destroyed his faith, because it seemed like they, and not God, were in control of things:

But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
    I had nearly lost my foothold.
 For I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (verses 2 and 3). 

This is a lie which any one of us can fall for if we aren’t on our guard, and if we aren’t seeking our God and his word. In the country I am originally from you might be said to be “losing your grip” if you don’t have your mind or certain aspects of your life under control. David almost lost his grip, and I’ve almost lost mine. If you’re honest, you’ll probably admit that you too have almost lost yours:

Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure...(verse 13)

But lets’s settle the matter in our hearts, just as David did. Let’s get a grip by recognizing that all things… all things… are ultimately under the control of our God, who is both perfectly patient and perfectly just:

When I tried to understand all this it troubled me deeply,

till I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood their final destiny.

Surely you place them on slippery ground:you cast them down to ruin (verse 16-17).

David’s conclusion was that God is just and faithful:

Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart,

and my portion forever (verse 23-25).

 

 

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THE POST-TRUTH POST

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, Politics — Leave a comment
May 26, 2018

Two kinds of people are interested in the type of culture we live in today-those who are concerned about it, and hope and pray to reverse the negative trends, and those who are promoting the negative trends…

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Of course, the promoters, the drivers of our social and political world, don’t see their view as being negative. They’re heading, they think, towards a utopia in which all shackles of morality and propriety are totally removed; in which the old order of things is done away; in which the Judaeo-Christian world-view is abolished and forgotten.

I was listening to an interview with a member of Ravi Zacharias’ team, who was talking about our “post-truth” culture. We’ve moved, he said, from “post-modernism” into “post-truth”. Post-truth culture is one in which, as in post-modernism, truth is perceived to be subjective only (my truth is my truth, your truth is yours), but also one in which the facts don’t matter any more. What matters now is feelings and preferences.

This definition and observation didn’t tell me anything new. I’ve realized for many years that a large number of people-perhaps a majority- aren’t interested in genuine debate or inquiry in order to arrive at facts or truths. Instead, they’ve made up their minds already, based upon what they want to be true, even if it’s blatantly obvious that it isn’t. They only seek to bolster their views with any line of reasoning, faulty or not, which serves to intimidate and bash the “ignorant” and “bigoted” rabble.

In defense of my own ignorance and bigotry, I can say that I once held to many politically-correct tenets which I now see as being faulty or destructive. No-one can accuse me correctly of being uninformed and closed-minded, because I’ve seen both sides of the moral, political, philosophical and social divide.

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I use the word “divide” in its singular sense intentionally here, because if you haven’t noticed, our culture, ostensibly rich and self-proclaimed to be “diverse”, is actually shaping up to be two-sided and polarized. On the one side we have those holding to the traditional view of society and culture which is largely Christian in its morality; one-man one-woman marriages; a uniform view of right and wrong; an un-wavering patriotism; age-old work ethics, and a conservative understanding of immigration and societal growth in which those coming in do so legally, and with the intention of blending into what is already here.

On the other side of the cultural divide we have those pushing, particularly since the start of President Obama’s reign, with all their might to demolish all the above standards, and to replace them with anything else which suits their no-holds barred morality. The Judaeo-Christian view of things is the one obstacle in their road to Utopia.

The election of Donald Trump represented the worst thing which could have happened to the progressive agenda. Trump is no choir boy by any standards, but he did and does hold to the principles of a predominantly Christian culture, as outlined above, and he does take serious note that there are many millions who still see society in its traditional sense. Consequently, the effort to remove him has been driven by angry desperation, and a desperation which claims to be tolerant but which in fact refuses to listen, and which unashamedly negates any reference to objective, verifiable facts. Even the laws and constitution of the land are seen to be enemies in our post-truth age. And so my post returns to its starting point.

The throwing-off of Truth is nothing new. It’s been done over and over again, since the very beginning of man. Someone gets tired of living by the rules-particularly God’s rules-and here comes the abandonment of rational thought, and the embracing of anything which opposes it. It’s a prideful attitude which is destined for failure. The underlying belief is that either there is no God, no Person with any expectations of us, or that even if there is, he/she/it is irrelevant and not worth considering anyway. It’s rather like your left hand intently disliking the rest of your body and so deciding its going to go off and live independently of the rest of you.

We can no more live in a universe without God than we can live in a world without air. And unfortunately for those rebelling against the way of things, against the nature of the real universe governed by its creator, there is nowhere else to go. The One who ultimately controls all things, who gives and sustains life, does indeed have certain expectations. He also has no intention of giving away His universe.

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A LETTER FROM AMERICA

Filed under: APOLOGETICS, FAITH, JESUS CHRIST, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, Politics, The Meaning of Life, Uncategorized — Leave a comment
May 20, 2018

I’ve become more and more aware in recent years of what my one-time friends, my family (who I still love), and my countrymen think of what has happened to me since I left the UK and settled in the United States, and also what has happened to the U.S. So to those who might occasionally dare to stray into the weird world of Nick Fisher, here is a report, and an apologetic of what indeed has happened to me and to my home, America.

 

One old friend of mine once opined that I had been “snapped”. It was a derogatory term for what happens when a person inexplicably changes radically and suddenly, usually the result of being “brainwashed” by a cult. He had put into one word what many were saying about me, nervously and in hushed tones of sympathy and fear. Nick would never be the same again…

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I could go into a lengthy treatise on my view of the world, which so terrified and now disgusts all those people who would always look at me sideways if ever I were to bump into them on the street. But a few encompassing notes will suffice.

First, I am without regret. My problem was not that I was “snapped” into a false way of thinking in which my mind had become commandeered by some cult leader or group or church: it was that I previously had no coherent view of the world anyway. Like all those I’ve left behind then and now, all I saw of the world was what I saw immediately around me, what my friends said (which was often faulty) and what people on the TV told me. I was convinced that all the “experts” were right. So that if actor or comedian X, or news reader X had said that Mr Trump was preaching hatred and racism, I would have believed it. If Professor X said that it was now clear that man and the “other primates” had evolved from a lemur-like creature, I would have believed it. And if Reverend X had said that Jesus was just a man and that all religions could learn from each other I would have believed it.

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I had no courage of conviction; no clear understanding of mankind relating to actual visual verifiable evidence, and no solid set of answers to the big questions of life.

I am not enslaved to any cult or organization: I am not a member of any such entity. I haven’t even officially joined a church. I follow no-one except Jesus Christ. I have no obligations, no “religious” laws or set of rules to follow, and I have no-one to answer to…except my wife and my God. Apart from my work duties and my duty to country and the law of the land, I am free. In fact, I’m far more free than I ever was before I “snapped”. I have no dependence or reliance on chemicals or alcohol or anything else to make me happy or to numb me to reality. I have freedom of political thought without peer pressure or influence, and I have freedom of mind and conscience.

I’m free of the fear of what may or may not happen in the world. Instead I know how the world began and how it will end. I know where it came from and why, and I know where it is going.

I am free of the enslavement of evolutionism, for which I saw no evidence whatsoever-and neither have you. I am free of the chains of political correctness, which now tells millions how to think, how to eat, how to be, how to talk and how to believe. It re-writes history, science, nature, all the endeavors and knowledge of man, and plain simple logic such as gender identity. I am free of the ways of godless man…so much as I apply myself to be. That is, I don’t have to feel inferior to others who have money, influence, power, or good looks. I don’t have to hop from one romantic relationship to another any more, because I’ve learned how to be committed to someone instead of just using them.

I have freedom of spirit, convinced that when my body dies I will not. The ridiculous, unproven notion that I evolved from chemicals which in turn evolved from nothing has been, by my own choice and conscious inquiry, purged from my thought processes, and instead I’ve been free to look at the other, the far more satisfying and logical explanation for life, and for the evidence thereof. And knowing that there is indeed an incredible creator who has reached out to me by his Son, Jesus Christ, I am at peace with my God, and with the assurance that I am an eternal being, in the hands of one who holds the universe together. What could be better than that? Could another thousand nights of pub-going and stony-stupored gatherings be better? I know from experience that they are not. And so to America.

America has its problems, for sure: it’s a mass of humanity, just as Britain is. Yes we have some gun violence, but take those guns away and there will be plenty of knife violence in its place, just as there is in the UK. So would you rather die by bullet or by blade? There is very little gun violence where I live, partly because the criminal types have a healthy respect for the fact that if they break into a house, even with a gun, they may get shot first.

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I once hated the idea that the populace should own guns: in a perfect world they should not. But if you haven’t noticed, it isn’t a perfect world. Take away guns from law-abiding people and the criminals will keep theirs and have free reign over the innocent. The police will only show up to clean up the mess afterwards. It’s too late here to outlaw guns. And anyway, the ultimate necessity for an armed populace is to deter tyranny. Is government God? No, and neither should it be. Which brings me nicely to the subject of politics…

In the UK I was very socialistic in my views, as were my friends and most people I knew. People should all earn the same amount, I thought, and the government should handsomely support those not working. I’ve come to see things a little differently, and it’s not because I’m wealthy-I’m not.

If you work hard, you should enjoy the fruits of your labor. Those who are inventive, who have drive, ideas, passion for work and production, and those who provide work for others by their own industry should be allowed to do well and to prosper. There’s nothing wrong with that, and certainly nothing ungodly. Those who cannot work for whatever reason should be helped, yes. But those who have no intention of working (and yes, there are plenty of those) don’t deserve to be helped by the government. And after all, where does government get its money? It comes from people who work hard and pay taxes.

Finally, to Mr Trump. You, dear UK reader, have been fed a gigantic lie, as have many in the US. Most news outlets fabricate much of what you’ve heard about Trump. He is not racist in the slightest. He is not ignorant, as you’ve been told. How can a man who builds a business worth billions be ignorant? How can a wealthy successful businessman have no sense or understanding of the economy or of how the world works? How can a man who beat all the odds and the polls and the media win a presidential election by being stupid? But you have been told that’s the case.

You are lied to artfully by the media and certain politicians, as people in this country are. And don’t fool yourself into thinking that his politics make him greedy: there are billionaires in this country pushing for socialism. How do big money and socialism match? They match because those with wealth and power want to exert their wealth and power over you. That’s socialism for you: under socialism and communism some who would be telling us all how to live and think would be far more equal than the rest of us. They would, as they do now, have their armed guards and their weapons while the rest of us would land ourselves in court for even trying to defend ourselves.

I voted for socialists when I lived in the UK, and I can tell you that Trump cares far more for the average man than most Democrats do. He is the first national leader I have experienced in life that I respect and admire. At last, a great man has a little control for a little while. As far as immigration goes, he has no intention of limiting it, except for the illegal kind. But the media people want you to believe that he hates all colored people. This is nothing but a lie.

Think, dear Brits. Don’t be boxed in by that enormous blanket of so-called “expert” analysis and political correctness which very nearly smothered the United States under Obama, and which still threatens to do so under all those who  have been suitably numbed to freedom of thought.

Ask questions. Love freedom. Search for God.

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