Creation Science Evangelism

A:   In September of 2000 I was privileged to debate the well-known, self professed "progressive creationist" Dr. Hugh Ross for 3 hours. The debate was aired on the John Ankerberg (www.ankerberg.com) show nine weeks in a row starting in September of 2000 and is now available by special arrangement with Dr. Ankerberg from our ministry, CSE, www.drdino.com for $78 as a video series. This debate was my first encounter with Dr. Ross and I look forward to debating him again any time in the future if he is willing. I believe Dr. Ross is a sincere man who is convinced he must blend scripture with the theories currently being taught in science class. As any discerning Christian should know, sincerity and being a nice man has nothing to do with having correct doctrine. Some of the prophets of Baal were probably nice people also. Some of Dr. Ross's doctrine is heretical in my opinion (and the opinion of scores of other Christians) and needs to be exposed before it does further damage to the body of Christ. Rom. 3:4 "yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;"

Many major ministries have endorsed (to varying degrees) Dr. Ross such as:
Bill Bright -- Campus Crusade for Christ
R.C. Sproul -- Ligonier Ministries
Norman Geisler -- Southern Evangelical Seminary
Harold Lindsell -- former editor of Christianity Today
Don Richardson -- author of Peace Child and Eternity in Their Heart
Ralph D. Winter -- US Center for World Mission
Earl Radmacher -- former president of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary
Walter Kaiser -- Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and editor of Christianity Today
Stan Oakes -- Christian Leadership Ministries, Campus Crusade for Christ
Jim Barney -- InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of Canada
Ted Martin -- International School of Theology, Campus Crusade for Christ
John Ankerberg -- The John Ankerberg Show
James Dobson - Focus on the Family
Scores of pastors and leaders of churches across America

The fact that so many Christians have been taken in by Dr. Ross's obviously unscriptural teachings is a sad indicator of how the evolution propaganda of the last 200 years has infiltrated modern Christianity. To refute the many doctrinal errors of Dr. Ross in detail would require a huge book and others have already done this job well so I will only reprint some of their comments adding a few thoughts of my own.

Many people have argued that Hugh Ross is such a nice man and remains calm in the face of criticism. Based on my brief experience with him I would agree, and these are great qualities to have, however, I would like to point out that being a nice man has nothing to do with having correct doctrine. Many "nice people" have founded cults and were reported to be humble, considerate and intelligent yet they had wrong doctrine. Many mean spirited people such as Elijah who slew the prophets of Baal had right doctrine. It is important to constantly keep in mind, "thus sayeth the Lord" in this debate and not be swayed by a person being "nice" or sounding "intellectual".

Some have asked why I would debate Hugh Ross since he is a fellow Bible believing Christian. I know he claims to be a Bible believing Christian but his doctrine does not match the scriptures. Isaac of old was deceived because he went by the feelings (the wool on the hands of Jacob) and not the word (the voice of Esau). Many today fall for the same trap. It is always right to oppose error even if found in a brother.

Having read much of Dr. Ross's material, I must join many others in their observation that he may have only a head knowledge of Christianity having accepted the Bible intellectually but has not come through the door of repentance. See. John 10:1-14. Paul (Saul) had many "Christian" qualities but was lost. Phil. 3:4 "If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless."

Dr. Ross's testimony, in his own words is quite revealing. After telling us how he read through the Bible finding that it supported the big bang theory and what he was learning in his university courses he says,

"How could I not trust this book's message and the One who sent it with such supernatural precision through human messengers? With some delays and more than a little wrestling with personal pride, I did make a transfer of trust, inviting God, the Creator of the vast cosmos, to be my God, and Master of my destiny, through Jesus Christ, His Son." The Genesis Question p. 18.

As I read this it seemed to not tell of genuine repentance, turning from sin and placing saving faith in Jesus blood to pay for sins but rather pride and self-reliance. I hope for his sake that I am wrong in my evaluation. James tells us that the devils believe and tremble, James 2:19.

Dr. Ross's ministry is called Reasons to Believe. Having studied his teachings, I have joined the host of others who ask, "Is it reasons to believe the Bible or reasons to believe Hugh Ross?

It has often been the responsibility of followers of God to expose false doctrine. There is no way to do this and still appear to be "nice" people as the following examples show:

In Mk. 4:2 Jesus told us the key to all parables is the parable of the sower. Mt. 13 - The wheat and the tares grew together and looked alike, but one was not right. Many who name the name of Christ will hear, "depart from me. I never knew you." (I am told that tares look like wheat but are poison and refuse to "bow their head" as wheat does when it is ripe.)

Romans 16:17 warns us to: "mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine, which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple." I feel this applies to Dr. Ross. His doctrine has cast a stumbling block before many (Rev. 2:14) and caused much division in the church and God hates it.

Azariah the priest withstood King Uzziah when he went beyond the bounds and offered a sacrifice in II Chron. 26:19. Hugh's doctrine goes beyond scripture and needs to be withstood. Paul withstood Peter in Gal. 2:11 when Peter was wrong. Alexander the coppersmith caused harm to the gospel in II Tim. 2:14. Jesus instructed us to beware of false doctrine even from religious people like the Pharisees in Mt. 16:12.

I Kgs. 18:26 "And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. 40 - And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there."

Elijah did not look very tolerant of the beliefs of others that day, did he?

Pro. 6:16 - "These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:" 17 - "A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood," 18 - "An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

Gal.2: 11 - "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed."

Acts 18: 24 - "And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus." 25 - "This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly." [Dr. Ross is certainly eloquent also but his doctrine in wrong.]

I Sam. 15: 22 - "And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." 23 - "For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king." 24 - "And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice."

Matthew 15:6-9 - "Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. 12 - "Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."

Sadducees - Mt. 22:23 - "The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him," 24 - "Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother." 25 - "Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: 29 - "Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God."

[KH] Below are the miscellaneous notes I collected before my encounter with Hugh Ross. Scores of people have contributed to this section. I especially appreciate Dr. Danny Faulkner and James Sundquist for allowing me to use their many insightful comments. I will try to edit out duplicate comments and edit this section down as time permits, but I felt getting this information available now in any form was better than waiting. So many have been and are being deceived by Dr. Ross's doctrine. Please forgive the disconnected thoughts below and glean what you can.

Miscellaneous Notes

Local Flood?

One of Dr. Ross's false teachings is that the flood of Noah was only a local event. If he admitted the flood was world wide as the Bible teaches, it would have wiped out any evidence of the "billions of years" he believes in. If the flood were just a local event, why would God tell Noah to build the huge boat and stay in there for a year with all the animals? Why not tell Noah to move? Why didn't the people migrate all over the world if the penguins made it to South Pole? Did others survive so that we are not all descendants of Noah's family? Gen. 9:19 "These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread."

1. He says that God did not alter physics of his Creation. This is an amazing statement, because every time a miracle was performed, God dramatically altered the physics on earth. Example, when he cursed the earth, He changed the physics. The Israelites in the Wilderness wore shoes and clothes that NEVER wore out. When he turned the water to wine, he changed the physics. Regarding life. The Bible states that life is in the blood.
Plants don't have blood, so they don't have life. And as you stated, God destroyed everything wherein there is the breath of life. Plants also don't have breath. Finally, Genesis states that Eve is the mother of ALL living. Doesn't all mean all? Therefore, there were NO living humans born prior to Eve (Adam was not born but created). One more point. If Christ is the last or second Adam, then Adam must be the first man. Once again, Adam could not have antecedents. If he did then Christ is the 3rd Adam...or 4th...or millionth.

Most early Church Fathers did take Genesis literally and believed the days to be normal days. Some "Christians" of that day like St. Augustine wrote that the six days were not literal six days. But St. Augustine was WRONG not only about the Creation Week, but he also spiritualized away all of the Book of Revelation and Paul's Scripture in Romans... that the literal promises for Israel now applied to the Church. This kind of theology paved the way to the Holocaust.

- Hugh Ross (born 1945) is president and founder of Reasons to Believe, Inc., a Progressive Creationist ministry located in Pasadena, California. Yet, Reasons To Believe claims to be "an organization dedicated to showing how the latest scientific discoveries point to the God of the Bible, the Creator. Reasons To Believe was founded in 1986 with the desire to reach the secular scientific community with the truth of the Gospel. Today Reasons To Believe has 20 full time staff and 60 volunteers dedicated to sharing the joy of Christ through the latest scientific discoveries" (Reasons to Believe Internet web site--7/16/96). Ross has a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Toronto, and is the former Minister of Evangelism at the Sierra Madre Congregational Church. Ross has authored three books, two of which have become very controversial, The Fingerprint of God (1989) and Creation and Time (1994).

- Dr. Ross is a professing Christian currently in full-time, non-denominational ministry dealing with apologetics, especially Bible and science issues. Ross is perhaps the most visible spokesman for Progressive Creationism, a belief which opposes both atheistic evolutionism and historic Christianity's understanding of Biblical creationism. At best, then, Ross is a theistic evolutionist. He has become increasingly well-known as he has appeared on many "Christian" radio and television programs and spoken before numerous audiences (see list above). Ross packages his beliefs in a way that appears Biblically conservative and evangelical; thus, Ross prominently displays endorsements of his books from many respected evangelicals (so-called) (see list above).

- Few people (even pastors) have the time or background necessary to deal effectively with Progressive Creationism's/Ross's claims. Many have felt intimidated and confused by the scientific claims of its supporters and their insistence that the Bible supports their view. But Ross's views contrast sharply with those of fundamentalist, evangelical Christians who accept a literal, six-day Creation and a young Earth. Moreover, in some cases, Ross's stand on foundational Biblical issues is heretical at best and neo-orthodox at worst (see numbers 2, 4, and 11 below). The following documented listing of Ross's teachings has been compiled from the work of a variety of Bible-science organizations:

1. Origin of the Universe (the Big Bang). Dr. Ross teaches that the universe is 17 billion years old, plus or minus 3 billion years. He maintains that the universe began with a God-engineered "Big Bang," and that the stars and planets evolved into their present form and positions during these billions of years--eventually resulting in the formation of Earth approximately 5 billion years ago.

Ross claims that the Big Bang Theory has been "undeniably" proven, and he has taught the theory so strongly that if it were abandoned by the majority of scientists, as one day may be the case, it will be a major embarrassment to his ministry. [See: Creation and Time , pp. 91-118, 129; The Fingerprint of God , first edition (1989), pp. 158-159; Hugh Ross, "Why Big Bang Opponents Never Say Die," Facts & Faith newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 1990-91).]
[NOTE: God's Word provides lists of generations between Adam and Jesus Christ. Even if there were a few gaps in the lists, it would be absurd to accept insertions of tens of thousands (or even millions) of years in the genealogy. Actually, the great majority of scientific age estimation methods indicate a young earth. See Creation Science Evangelism video tape #1. Dr. Ross's bias is apparent in his willingness to accept only those scientific methods that agree with his belief in billions of years. In the final analysis, none of man's scientific age estimation methods can be considered foolproof, young or old. We would prefer to stick with the testimony of the only eyewitness, God.]

2. Origin of the Stars and Planets (order of creation). In contrast to Scripture, Dr. Ross teaches that the sun, moon, and stars were created even before the first "day" (i.e., "in the beginning"), rather than on the fourth day as stated in Genesis. He says that most of the stars existed long before Earth's creation; i.e., that approximately 10-15 billion years of stellar evolution occurred prior to the Creation Week. (Note: Thus, he claims that not all of the heavens and earth were created in six days as the Bible plainly states in Ex. 20:11.) Dr. Ross claims that Genesis 1 describes Creation from the point of view of one standing on the earth, and that the sun, moon, and stars did not become visible until the fourth day. He believes the stars were not created instantaneously, but they evolved by the physical laws of nature put into place by God: "This entire process of stellar evolution is by natural process alone. We do not have to invoke Divine intervention at any stage in the history of the life-cycle of the stars that we observe." According to Dr. Ross, many stars had long ceased to exist by the time of Adam's creation: "The planets and life-essential elements are the burned-up remains --i.e., ashes--of [the Big Bang's] hydrogen gas." [See: The Fingerprint of God, first edition (1989), pp. 158-159, 165-169; Creation and Time , pp. 52, 131, 148-151; Hugh Ross, "Why Big Bang Opponents Never Say Die," Facts & Faith newsletter, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 1990-91); Hugh Ross, "Species Development: Natural Process or Divine Action" audiotape, (Reasons to Believe, 1990).]

3. Creation Week (not days, but billions of years). Dr. Ross teaches that the Creation of the heavens and Earth took place about 4.6 billion years ago during six long, partially-overlapping periods, not 24 hour type days. [See: The Fingerprint of God, first edition (1989), pp. 146-155.] "Based on scientific dating records, each of God's creation days is several hundred million years long." [Hugh Ross, Genesis 1: A Scientific Perspective, Revised Edition (Sierra Madre, California: Wiseman Productions, 1983), p 11.] Dr. Ross teaches that we are currently in the 7th Day--a day that began after God made Adam and Eve, and which will not end until the beginning of the New Heavens and New Earth. [See: Creation and Time, pp. 59, 91-118.]

4. Origin of Death (not a result of sin). Dr. Ross strongly teaches that the existence of physical death in our world is not due to Adam's sin. He claims that death was created by God as a basic part of earthly existence since the beginning of life, and that physical death and animal predation existed for billions of years throughout the world prior to Adam's sin. (Note: Would not this belief cause the doctrines of sin and salvation to fall? If death and bloodshed preceded Adam's rebellion against God, then what are "the wages of sin" and how did the entrance of sin change things? And if death proceeded sin, then death is not the penalty for sin, and Christ's death on the cross accomplished nothing! Thus, any scheme that places death prior to man's sin is a False Gospel! ) [See: The Fingerprint of God, first edition (1989), pp. 153-155, 159-160; "Reasons to Believe," 90-second radio spots No. 47 & 48 (February 1991); Hugh Ross: "Focus on the Family" radio program, April 18, 1991.]

5. No Original Paradise. Dr. Ross does not believe the Garden of Eden was free of death, pain, suffering, or degeneration--a world created in perfection. According to Dr. Ross, there was no original paradise, except in the sense that Adam walked with God, experienced less pain than we do, and experienced no sin initially. He believes that death and degeneration existed in the beginning and have continued for millions of years. He also teaches that neither the fall to sin nor the Flood resulted in significant physical changes in Nature. Dr. Ross claims that our planet has always been subject to catastrophes and violent predation. He says that long before Adam, there were supernovas and collisions with meteorites that wiped out millions of animals and caused "mass extinction." There were floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, harmful mutations, and diseases of all sorts. In other words, God used "random, wasteful, inefficiencies" to create the world into which Adam was placed. [Creation and Time, pp. 55, 65-69, 88; Hugh Ross, "Species Development: Natural Process or Divine Action" audiotape, tape 2, side 1 (Reasons to Believe, 1990).]

[NOTE: According to the Bible, death (both physical and spiritual) entered the world through man's sin (Gen. 2:17; 3:19, Rom. 5:12; 6:23; 1 Cor. 15:20-23). The Bible indicates that our world is very different from the one which God created and pronounced as "very good." The Bible clearly says animals were not created carnivorous; God originally commanded them to eat plants--see Gen. 1:29-30, etc. Because of sin, God cursed the ground and physical creation (Gen. 3:17).

Scripture says the whole creation has been affected by man's sin, causing it to groan as it awaits freedom from bondage to decay (Rom. 8:20-22). The global Flood judgment changed earth even more (Gen. 8:21). One day God will restore paradise. Once again the lion will lie down with the lamb. (Is 11:6)]

6. Origin of Species: Progressive Creations (amoeba to man). Dr. Ross defines Progressive Creationism as "the hypothesis that God has increased the complexity of life on earth by successive creations of new life forms over billions of years while miraculously changing the earth to accommodate the new life."

[Quote is from "Dinosaurs and Hominids" audiotape, Reasons to Believe (1990).] In fact, Dr. Ross accepts a history of life very similar to that outlined by Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium theory describes slow progress by natural means, interspersed with mass extinctions and sudden, rapid advances. For Dr. Ross, the advances are the result of a multitude of Divine miracles. He seems to accept far more miraculous creations ("hundreds of millions of species of life") than most Progressive Creationists when he claims to "deny any significant biological evolution over time scales long or short."

Elsewhere, Dr. Ross seems to have a different attitude when he says that "many of the changes that take place within the biological arena [are] by natural process, natural selection, mutational advance." He teaches that for billions of years before Adam, major disasters befell the animals, including supernovas, asteroid impacts, etc. As a result, animals frequently became extinct, never to be seen by man. God stepped in many times to create replacements or improved models--sometimes completely abandoning entire groups of animals, changing the previous course of life on earth.

Eventually, God created Adam and Eve from the dust, but after the majority of the earth's history had already taken place. The order of creation was from amoeba to man. Thus, for Progressive Creationists, creation was an extremely long process interspersed with numerous miraculous events, which produced new forms of animals and plants. [See: Hugh Ross, "Open Line" radio program (Moody, April 1994); Creation and Time, p. 83; "Species Development," audiotape; "Dinosaurs and hominids," audiotape (Reasons to Believe, 1990).]

7. Hominids (man-like creatures ). Dr. Ross: "Bipedal, tool-using, large-brained hominids roamed the earth at least as long ago as one million years. New evidence indicates that the hominid species may have gone extinct before, or as a result of, the appearance of man. Starting about 2 to 4 million years ago, God began creating man-like mammals." Although some of these creatures looked completely human (e.g., Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal), "used tools, buried their dead, and painted on cave walls," they were actually animals and "had no spirits." He has stated that the major difference between men and hominids is that humans were "the first spirit creatures." [See: The Fingerprint of God, first edition (1989), pp. 159-160; "Genesis One, Dinosaurs, and Cavemen," (Reasons to Believe, 1989); Creation and Time, p. 88, etc.

8. Origin of Man. Dr. Ross teaches that man was created by God from the dust of the Earth, but not on the last of six 24-hour type days, as the Bible teaches. Humans were created somewhere between 6,000 and 60,000 years ago-- after the majority of Earth's supposed history had already taken place, and after billions of years of animal life and death. [Note: The Bible says that "from the beginning of the creation (not 17 billion years after the beginning) God made them male and female." (Mark 10:6)] Dr. Ross: "If the time since the creation of the universe were scaled down to a single year, the whole of human history would be less than one minute." [See: The Fingerprint of God, first edition (1989), pp. 159-160, 178-179; Creation and Time, pp. 140-141; Hugh Ross, "Open Line" radio program with Chris Fabry (Moody, April and May, 1994).]

9. Pre-Flood World. According to Dr. Ross, the pre-Flood world was basically identical to the post-Flood world--same geology and paleontology, no significant environmental changes. He claims that rain began during the second Creation Day, when the modern atmosphere was created billions of years before the creation of Adam. (Note: The Bible specifically says there was no rain until at least the sixth day, which for Dr. Ross would be billions of years after plants and animals had first been created.) Incredibly, Dr. Ross has also claimed that before the Flood "probably at least 19 out of 20 people were dying a death of murder. That's what was keeping the people from living a long period of time." (Note: To the contrary, the Bible indicates pre-Flood lifespans were generally very long. The average for the patriarchs was 912 years. In addition, such violent conditions would cause people to scatter all over the world--a problem for Dr. Ross, because he teaches the Flood was local, not global.) [Hugh Ross, "The Flood" audiotape (Reasons to Believe, 1990).]

10. Noah's Flood (regional, not global). Dr. Ross teaches that the Flood of Noah's day did not cover the entire planet nor all Earth's mountains of the day. Rather, Noah and animals floated on a shallow, temporary inland sea (22 feet deep), somehow covering the Mesopotamian region; thus, it was a regional flood which destroyed all mankind except Noah and his family). He believes that the Flood did not destroy animals outside of man's sphere of influence; death was basically limited to those "livestock, poultry, game animals," and any other birds and mammals that had contact with man. [See: Facts & Faith, Reasons to Believe's quarterly newsletter, multiple part article on the Flood, 1989-91, especially parts 7 and 8 (Fall and Winter 1990); Hugh Ross, "Noah's Floating Zoo," Facts & Faith news letter Vol. 4 (Fall 1990), pp. 4-5; Creation and Time, p. 73; Hugh Ross, "The Flood," audiotape (Reasons to Believe, 1990).]
[NOTE: Dr. Ross claims that earth's entire human population was limited to this Mesopotamian region. Yet, the Bible clearly states that every land animal and bird on the face of the earth was wiped out (Genesis 6:7; 7:21-23). Dr. Ross teaches that most of the animals of the world were not affected, only those animals in Mesopotamia. Of course, few, if any, of these animals were unique to the region. According to Dr. Ross, all of today's land animals and birds are not descended from the creatures on the Ark. In other words, God required Noah to consume 120 years of his life building a huge boat to save representative animals which really didn't need to be saved. Most, if not all, of these animals were alive and well in other parts of the world. In Dr. Ross's scenario, dry land is just over the horizon all along. Despite the lack of necessity, God keeps Noah trapped in this boat full of animals under these strange circumstances for over a year.]

11. "Dual Revelation" Theology. Dr. Ross frequently says that Nature is "the sixty-seventh book" of the Bible; he tends to treat Nature as equal in authority to the written revelation of God (the Bible), and that neither is "inferior or superior" to the other. Dr. Ross believes that Nature provides an accurate understanding of God and His plan for history. They are simply "different, just like the content of Ezra is distinct from that of Romans" (Creation and Time, p. 57). He proceeds to accept most of the interpretations of secular science while attempting to maintain the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. He has accused young-earth creationists of believing in "Single-Revelation Theology" and denying "physical reality." He holds the unorthodox theological view that, "The plan of salvation as stated in the Bible can be seen through observation of the universe around us." For example, he teaches that Job "without the aid of scriptures discerned all the elements of 'the gospel,' the good news of how man can find eternal life in God." [See: The Fingerprint of God, second edition (1989), pp. 144-145, 163-164, 179-181; Creation and Time, pp. 11, 41, 55-57, 123; Hugh Ross, "Creation Days," audiotape (Reasons to Believe, 1990); "Hugh Ross's Apologetics Hot Line," Christianity Today (March 11, 1991), p. 23.]
[NOTE: It is important to understand that: (1) Nature has no speech or voice (Psalm 19:3). Therefore, Nature is subject to Man's misinterpretation, as the history of science has repeatedly demonstrated; (2) Man is particularly limited in his ability to know the ancient past with certainty. We have no time machines to travel back and examine actual events. Secular scientists, who describe in great detail ancient animals and environments are guessing, making assumptions, and hypothesizing; (3) The world and the universe have changed since their creation.

The Fall and the global Flood of Noah greatly marred the perfection of God's creations. What we have now is different in many ways from what God originally created; (4) We humans are quite ungod-like in our abilities and understanding. We are sinful, finite creatures with an enormous inclination to believe in lies. Earth is under the dominion of the Father of Lies, Satan. Our understanding of this universe is very incomplete and fallible. Scientific opinions are often biased and change regularly, sometimes radically. Dr. Ross even goes so far as to make the strange claim that "in addition to the words of the Bible being 'God-breathed useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness,' so also are the words of God spoken through the work of His hands " (Creation and Time, p. 56). Dr. Ross elevates the message of creation beyond its natural limitations. On many matters, it is naive, pompous, and exceedingly dangerous to rate sinful man's incomplete and changing understanding of this degenerating universe as equal in clarity with the written Word of God! Such views have led to dreadful errors. The Bible has demonstrated its beautiful accuracy again and again, in contrast to the "scientific" pronouncements of men which have frequently been wrong and often dominated by blinding bias.]

Dr. Hugh Ross by Bolton Davidheiser
Ph.D., Zoology

Speaking the truth in love!
Copyright September, 1993

Published by Logos Publishers
P.O. Box 9264, Canoga Park, CA 91309
(818) 718-7319

PUBLISHERS' NOTE

September, 1993.

Dear Friend:
Greetings in the Lord. We are pleased to print Dr. Davidheiser's booklet entitled "A STATEMENT CONCERNING THE MINISTRY OF DR. HUGH ROSS." This is an honest assessment of Dr. Hugh Ross.

Dr. Ross is a fine Christian. However, his views on the Bible and science need to be evaluated and exposed. Dr. Davidheiser did just that.

We believe that this book will enlighten this generation concerning the ministry of Dr. Hugh Ross. Dr. Davidheiser have studied most of Dr. Hugh Ross's materials and tapes and found that Christians need to know the exact position of Dr. Hugh Ross. Dr. Davidheiser wrote: "I have no desire to hurt him personally, and doing so is the one thing that makes me somewhat reluctant, but it seems definitely much more important to warn potential pastors who would have him at their churches."

In fact, Dr. Davidheiser sent a copy of the draft of this booklet to Dr. Hugh Ross for comments. Dr. Davidheiser said that "I think that the honorable thing to do is to send it first to Dr. Ross to ask if he finds any errors of fact on my part. I sent him a copy of the first edition and he had found no fault. He seems to think people criticize him because they do not know what a fine person he is and would not criticize him if they know him personally...."

Christians have to be informed about the exact position which Dr. Ross takes. This is the only reason why you should read Dr. Davidheiser's paper on "A STATEMENT CONCERNING THE MINISTRY OF DR. HUGH ROSS."

If you have any comments or reviews of the booklet, we would be happy to hear from you. Please write to us.

With God's Blessings,
Chris Chui, Ph. D.

A STATEMENT CONCERNING THE MINISTRY OF DR. HUGH Ross

BOLTON DAVIDHEISER
PH.D., ZOOLOGY
BOX 22
LA MIRADA CA 90637

When writing or speaking in defense of the Bible, several things should be kept in mind. Honesty is imperative, and gives us the advantage, for as John the disciple said, "Thy word is truth" (John 17:17). False information or inaccurate statements may impress the naive, but sooner or later someone will recognize them for what they are. The main damage in this is that it will further antagonize knowledgeable unbelievers and it becomes more difficult to reach them. Presentations should be well researched to eliminate error, but all of us are fallible, and when we make a mistake we should be ready to admit it.

Dr. Hugh Ross has a worldwide ministry. His mission is to affirm the scientific accuracy of the Bible. He has a large following of enthusiastic believers who are impressed with his personal testimony and his scientific information.

He is a "Big Bang" enthusiast. In fact, he is so strongly attached to this theory that if it is ever replaced by another, such as the plasma theory presently accepted by a minority of scientists, it will be embarrassing to his ministry.

To those who do not know what the Big Bang is, it is the theory that at some time in the past, now generally believed to have been about fifteen to twenty billion years ago, all the matter in the universe was concentrated into a single mass, which exploded with a "big bang."

The idea began with a Belgian astronomer, Georges Edward Lemaitre. According to Isaac Asimov, Lemaitre conceived this mass to be "no more than a few light-years in diameter." At the very least, that would be two light-years or about twelve trillion miles. By 1965 that figure was reduced to 275 million miles, by 1972 to 71 million miles, by 1974 to 54 thousand miles, by 1983 to "a trillionth the diameter of a proton," and now, to nothing at all! A singularity! It exploded, producing hydrogen and helium and perhaps some lithium. Time became the hero and multiple billions of years, later it had produced everything in the universe, including Lewis Carroll's famous "shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings."

Two aspects of this theory have made it attractive to some religious leaders and their followers. First, it resembles the Bible in having matter come into existence at a certain definite time instead of existing eternally in the past. Second, it proposes matter coming into existence from nothing. However, the multiple billions of years involved are not in accord with Biblical chronology and the manner of development of galaxies, stars, planets, etc., is through natural forces instead of by divine fiat.

YOUNG EARTH VERSUS OLD EARTH

Dr. Ross published a statement which sounds very good, "We affirm that Genesis [chapters] 1-11 is factual, as is the rest of the book. We deny that the teachings of Genesis 1-11 are mythical and that scientific hypotheses about earth history or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation." But there is an inconsistency between a multiple billion year old earth and a Biblically recorded time of only 1656 years from the creation of Adam, the first man, to the flood. Anyone can figure out this interval of time in a few minutes from Genesis 5 and 7:6. The record is presented as a straightforward father-to- son genealogy with no gaps, but even if there were gaps the calculation would remain valid because time is given from the birth of one person to the birth of the next one mentioned.

Dr. Ross told me the solution is that some scholars interpret Hebrew cardinal numbers differently than other scholars do. I asked what Hebrew scholar I might consult for confirmation of this. He named one, a Hebrew scholar whom he quotes in his book The Fingerprint of God to uphold the idea that the days of creation were longer than twenty-four hours. I wrote to him about the matter, enclosing return postage, but received no reply. However, a difference of opinion about the interpretation of these numbers should not be so great as to make a significant difference between Biblical chronology and the much greater scientific time.

As a Big Bang enthusiast, Dr. Ross needs lots of time for the formation of the world and its contents. Naturally, he considers the days of creation to be long ages. As is to be expected, and as is common practice among those who espouse long ages of cosmic and geologic time, he brings up the matter of the Hebrew word yom, used for "day" in the creation account of the opening chapter of Genesis. As in our language, this word can refer to a day of twenty-four hours or it may represent a long period of time, as "In the day of Charles Darwin." The question is: What does it mean in the account of creation? A common procedure in such cases is to refer to authorities for an answer.

Dr. John R. Howitt, a personal friend of mine, now deceased, wrote a pocket-sized booklet of nearly a hundred pages with 230 references to works of science, which he titled Evolution, "Science Falsely So-Called" He wrote anonymously because he believed he would lose his job if it became known that he was the author. Dr. Howitt wrote to appropriate professors in nine leading universities, asking, "Do you consider that the Hebrew word yom (day), as used in Genesis 1, accompanied by a numeral should properly be translated as (a) a day as commonly understood, (b)) an age, (c) either a day or an age without preference?" Oxford and Cambridge did not reply but the professors at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Toronto, London, McGill, and Manitoba replied unanimously that it should be translated as a day as commonly understood. Professor Robert H. Pfeiffer of Harvard added, "of twenty-four hours" to his reply. 4

Dr. Ross also supplies a list and his list of authorities interpret the creation days as long periods of time. In his book he writes, "Many of the early church fathers and other biblical scholars interpret the creation days of Genesis 1 as long periods of time. The list includes the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century); Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, apologist and martyr (2nd century); Origen, who rebutted heathen attacks on Christian doctrine (3rd century); Basil (4th century); Augustine (5th century); and, later, Aquinas (13th century), to name a few. The significance of this list lies not only in the prominence of these individuals as biblical scholars, defenders of the faith, and pillars of the early church (except Josephus), but also in that their scriptural views cannot be said to have been shaped to accommodate secular opinion. Astronomical, paleontological, and geological evidences for the antiquity of the universe, of the earth, and of life did not come forth until the nineteenth century."

However, Flavius Josephus, famous Jewish historian of the first century, wrote about creation in the first chapter of Book One of his Antiquities of the Jews, "..God commanded that there should be light: and when that was made, he considered the whole mass, and separated the light and the darkness; and the name he gave to one was Night, and the other he called Day; and he made the beginning of light and the time of rest the Evening and the Morning; and this was the first day...." There seems to be nothing comparable to the length of a geological age here or for the other days of creation as he described them.

Josephus also said, "On the fourth day he adorned the heaven with the sun, moon, and other stars " Rather clearly he put the creation of the sun on the fourth day and did not have it formed at the start of creation, as does Dr. Ross and also Dr. Scofield in his famous Bible notes, to become visible on the fourth day due to the removal of a cloud. Furthermore, Dr. Ross says the seventh day, the day of rest, following the six days of creation, "is not closed out," and continues to the present time.

Thus he says that all the time of recorded history, including our own time, is included in the seventh day of rest. Contrary to this, Josephus wrote about acts of God going on in time "after the seventh day was over." Furthermore, the Bible tells that God did work aft* the seventh day of rest. Referring to miracles, Jesus said, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work" John 5:17). Also it is to be noted that there were special acts of creation after the completion of the six days. During a famine, a widow at Zarepath had left only a handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a cruse. But because she befriended the prophet Elijah, the meal and the oil were replenished as used and the barrel and cruse did not become empty during the remainder of the famine (I Kings 17:8-16). There were two occasions when the Lord fed multitudes by multiplying a few loaves and fishes (Matthew 16:8-10, etc.). At a wedding in Cana He turned water into wine instantly John 2:1-10). After referring to Josephus, Dr. Ross cites examples of heroic "early church fathers" who believed in long periods of time for the days of creation.

Origen held so many erroneous views that what he thought of the length of the days of creation may be dismissed as of little if any value. He spiritualized Biblical statements, seeking hidden meanings instead of accepting literally what the Bible says, including the resurrection of Christ from the tomb.

He contended that the literal sense is not that for which the Holy Spirit gave the Scriptures to Christians and said, "The Scriptures are of little use to those who understand them as they are written." He believed the task of commentators is to penetrate alleged allegories of Scripture in order to find the true meaning. This method opens the way for private erroneous interpretations, as is characteristic of the cults.

Origen believed that rational beings were created as spirits and as they became negligent in their adoration of God they fell varying amounts into different categories, some becoming angels, some human beings, and some demons. Jesus Christ, the Logos, was the exception. He did not fall at all. But still this makes Him subordinate to the Father, being at first on the same level as created beings. For this Jerome, among others, considered Origen to be the precursor to the Arian heresy, which in our day is expressed in the theology of the Unitarians and the Jehovah's Witness cult.

Denying hell, Origen reasoned that humans, demons, and even Satan can, and in the end will, be reconciled to God, anticipating the Universalist heresy. He said there is to be "a purging baptism of fire," and thus he anticipated the idea of purgatory, which became a doctrine of the Catholic Church at the First Council of Lyons in 838 A.D.. and affirmed at subsequent councils.

Then there was Augustine. Professor Paul Amos Moody of the University of Vermont, in his college textbook, introduction to Evolution, third edition, wrote, "Wise churchmen like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas [another on the list of Dr. Ross] early recognized that these chapters [Genesis 1 and 2], while expressing important religious truths concerning the Creator, should not be considered as literal history."

In another college textbook, Principles of Organic Evolution, Arthur Ward Lindsey of Dennison University, wrote, "...several of the church fathers expressed ideas of organic evolution even though the trend of ecclesiastical thought led more readily into other lines of reasoning." He said that Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas (all on Dr. Ross' list), "expressed belief in the symbolic nature of the Biblical story of creation and in their comments made statements clearly related to the concept of evolution." This being the case, it is only natural that they would have to accept long periods of time for evolution to proceed.

The famous evolutionist Henry Fairfield Osborn of Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History wrote that Augustine "sought a naturalistic interpretation of the Mosaic record... and taught that in the institution of nature we should not look for miracles but for the laws of nature."

Eldon J. Gardner of Utah State University wrote, "St. Augustine... favored an allegorical interpretation of the book of Genesis in the Bible and openly promoted an evolutionary concept as opposed to special creation." 9

W. R. Thompson, Ph.D., Catholic creationist, professor and director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control at Ottawa, Canada, is probably most well known for his challenging fourteen-page introduction to a 1955 edition of Darwin's Origin of Species. He wrote a paper (date not known) in which he said, "As early as 1921, Canon H. de Dolodot in La Darwinisme, issued under the auspices of the University of Louvain, cites St. Augustine as holding as certain the theory of absolute natural evolution of living beings to the human body itself." He is saying that Augustine accepted the evolution of living things up to and including the bodies of human beings.

The point of all this is that liberals and evolutionists are expected to advocate long periods of time for the origin of the world and its contents. They have to. Large amounts of time are necessary in evolutionary theory.

Irenaeus is left among the people listed by Dr. Ross as advocates of long periods of time for origins. How his name got on the list is not dear, for in the writings of Irenaeus I have not been able to find anything indicating that he believed in long intervals of time for creation. It seems he was an outright creationist. Here are some quotations from his writings:

"God is supreme ruler over all things, for they are His own creation; with His Word (the Son) and His Wisdom (the Holy Spirit) He made all things." "His own Word is both suitable and sufficient for the formation of all things, even as John, the disciple of the Lord, declares regarding Him: 'All things were made by Him and without Him was nothing made' John 1:3). Now among 'all things' our world must be embraced. It too, therefore, was made by His Word, as Scripture tells us in the book of Genesis that He made all things connected with our world by His Word.

David also expresses the same truth [when he said], 'For He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created' (Psalms 33:9, 148:5)." "God is a Spirit, and so fashioned everything by His Spirit." "But man He fashioned in His own hands." "But God Himself brought a trance upon Adam and put him to sleep.... And God took one of Adam's ribs, and filled up the flesh for it, and built up the rib which He took into a woman, and brought her in this wise to Adam."

THE ORDER OF EVENTS IN CREATION

The first chapter of Genesis records the chronological order of events as they occurred during the creation week. Dr. Ross lists thirteen creation events and says the probability that Moses could have put all of them in the correct order, if he arranged them by chance and not by inspiration, is only one chance in six trillion (13 factorial = 6,227,020,800, or about six billion). But he says Moses did arrange them in the correct order. Except by faith, how is there any way of knowing whether Moses recorded the events in the right order or not? The only other basis for standardizing seems to be by comparing them with the order offered by "science," that is, using as a standard the order give by evolutionary scientists in their textbooks. Actually, this is putting the authority of the evolutionary scientists above the authority of the Bible.

In the first place, the general reader of the Bible would conclude that the original light upon the earth did not come from the sun because the sun was not created until the fourth day. But the science textbooks say the sun was formed before the earth, and thus light upon the earth first came from the sun. Therefore the general reader would conclude, based upon modern science, that this was the first mistake of Moses in recording the order of events in creation. To accommodate Genesis with science, Dr. Ross, and before him Dr. Scofield in his famous Bible notes, teach that the sun really was created at the start but did not appear until a dense cloud was removed on the fourth day. But without this explanation, the general reader, following the scientific view, would believe that Moses had erred.

On the first day, when God said, "Let there be light," it was not necessary that the light be sunlight. In fact, if it had been sunlight there would have been no occasion for God to separate the light from the darkness, as the opacity of the earth would have done it. In the New Jerusalem, in the future eternity, there will be no need for the sun, for the glory of the Lord will illuminate it (Revelation 21:23. See also Isaiah 60:19, 20). As there will be no need for the sun then, there was no need for the sun in the beginning, before the fourth day. Eventually the sun will burn out if the Lord does not intervene, as the Bible says He will.

Green plants were created on the third day. For the general Bible reader, not influenced by Dr. Ross or Dr. Scofield, this would be before the creation of the sun on the fourth day. If the days were long periods of time, plants could not survive without light for photosynthesis. As an explanation, Dr. Ross postulates two clarifications of the atmosphere, a partial clarification before the third day to make the cloud translucent so photosynthesis could function and a complete clarification on the fourth day, when the sun, moon, and stars became visible. The general Bible reader would not know about these explanations and if accepting long "days" in the creation account, would consider this the second mistake made by Moses.

Created on day five were fish, birds, and whales, followed on the next day by "creeping things" and mammals, including man. The Hebrew word here translated "whale" is not specific and can refer to an indefinite large sea creature. But the general reader would understand the reference to mean whales. As to the "creeping things" created on the sixth day, the authoritative Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament says for Genesis 1:25, "Remesm [asculine] a reptile, collect[ively] reptiles." According to science, "creeping things," meaning reptiles, and even if thought also to include insects, came before birds and whales and not after. This would be considered Moses' third mistake.

EARTH'S EARLY ATMOSPHERE

On a tape Dr. Ross says, "Science and the Bible totally agree concerning the initial condition of planet earth, that the earth began with an atmosphere dominated by ammonia and methane." Where does the Bible say that?

He also says that the darkness which was "upon the face of the deep" Genesis 1:27) was caused by the ammonia and methane in the atmosphere. Actually, since the early 1980s the Oparin-HaldaneUrey-Miller concept of an early atmosphere dominated by ammonia and methane is being replaced by a theory that the earth's early atmosphere was dominated by nitrogen and carbon dioxide, formed by outgassing from the earth's interior through volcanic action. Dr. Joel Levine, of NASA, found by computer analysis that an ammonia-methane atmosphere at the earth's distance from the sun would be chemically unstable and last only a very short time. For a popular presentation of this, see Science Digest 91:5:42, May, 1983. Oxidized iron in what are considered ancient rocks leads some to think the early atmosphere had considerable oxygen.

The very latest on this may be seen in the August, 1993, issue of Scientific American. It is reported that Dr. William Schopf of the University of California at Los Angeles found supporting evidence for the formation of the modern atmosphere about three and a half billion years ago.

Scientists can change their minds but Dr. Ross said the Bible agrees that the earth's early atmosphere was dominated by ammonia and methane.

Dr. Ross further said the difficult problem was to remove the ammonia and methane from the atmosphere and into space so light could get through to the earth and still retain the water vapor in the atmosphere. -lo accomplish this was a delicate operation, he said, requiring considerable precision because the molecular weights of methane, ammonia, and water are so close, being respectively 16, 17, and 18.

Concerning the possibility of gases being lost into space from the atmosphere, he mentions-five factors. 1. The greater the mass of a planet, the stronger the gravitational attraction, and thus the greater the difficulty for gases to escape the atmosphere. 2. The smaller the size of a planet (for the same mass), the more difficult the loss would be. 3. The temperature of each layer of the atmosphere. 4. The temperature of the sun. 5. The kinds and amounts of materials between the earth and the sun. Furthermore, he says that all of these five factors would need to be held within a variation of not more than one or two percent for billions of years, and that the probability of this, putting it conservatively, would be something like one chance in a billion.

What phenomenon, under these highly improbable conditions, could have brought about the separation of ammonia and methane from the atmosphere, with the retention of water vapor? He says it was the separation of the moon from the earth in the early days of their formation! "When the moon was cast off [from the earth] its mass was sufficient to bring about some changes. The sun became gradually a little warmer because of the advancement of its position along its evolutionary track. The changed parameters caused the atoms [of the atmosphere] to lose enough temperature and pressure to allow it [the atmosphere] to become transparent." (As already mentioned, he says that for the sake of plants needing sunlight to carry on photosynthesis, the atmosphere already had become translucent previous to this.)

CONCERNING THE MOON

George Darwin, son of the famous Charles Darwin, was the first to consider mathematically the relationship between the moon and the tides. He believed that at one time the moon was a part of the earth. Presently the moon is slowly receding from the earth, and knowing the rate at which it is doing this, it might seem to be an easy matter to calculate backward in time to find when the moon was here as a part of the earth. But it is not that simple. For example, knowing the rate at which people are leaving California because of taxes and earthquakes, one can figure when no one will be left in the state, but that won't happen.

Although the moon at present is slowly receding from the earth, it does not necessarily follow that at one time it was here as a part of the earth. Of current astronomical books consulted, six favored the theory that the moon developed at the same time as the earth from similar nebular material, six mentioned a separation-from-the-earth theory and said it had to be abandoned, and one said Darwin's theory "cannot be excluded." The general opinion is that at this time there is no satisfactory theory for the origin of the moon. How then can Dr. Ross dogmatically say to his audience, "We know for certain that the moon came from the earth"?

According to Darwin's theory, the earth was spinning at a terrific rate and was still soft at the time the moon separated from it, and so there was no problem as it passed through the Roche limit, which would break up a solid body the size of the moon because of the differences in gravitational attractions on the side toward the earth and the side away from the earth. But Dr. Ross does have this problem, because he assumes that the moon was split from the earth as a solid and so would be shattered as it passed through the Roche limit. He gives evidence, altogether unnecessary, that gravitation was working at that time and so he concludes the only way out of the dilemma, that the moon did not shatter, is to believe its passage through the Roche limit must have been a miracle!

Furthermore, if the moon had been expelled from the earth as a solid entity and if somehow it had gotten through the Roche limit intact, either it would have fallen back to earth again or would have gone off into space. It would not have gone into orbit around the earth. In order to get artificial satellites to orbit the earth, the rockets that carry them must be directed to change course after liftoff. If the moon somehow could have come from the earth, in accordance with Darwin's theory and gone into orbit, it would be expected to follow the earth's equator, which it does not. However, it is reported that an attempt is being made to revive the Darwinian explanation. 15

Dr. Ross says that the bed of the Pacific Ocean is the scar left upon the earth that shows where the moon was removed. (The volume of the moon is more than thirty times the present volume of the Pacific Ocean.) However, he also explains it another way. He says, "The Bible tells us that God somehow allowed or created an indentation in the earth..." Where does the Bible say that? He continues, "and since water flows downhill, all the ocean water flowed into that hole and dry land appeared on the other side, and that's how come we have both oceans and continents." He tells that this landmass broke into continents and "the continents are moving to fill in the Pacific Ocean .... We know there is a hole in the Pacific Ocean and the continents are moving to fill it in. The Atlantic Ocean is getting bigger and the Pacific Ocean is getting smaller."

The most picturesque evidence of the separation of continents by continental drift is the jigsaw pattern of the South America-Africa complex. These continents appear as though they fitted together. Geophysicists say South America is moving toward the Pacific Ocean at the rate of about four-fifths of an inch per year because of the rising and spreading of matter at the mid-Atlantic ridge and not because of a Pacific Ocean sink that is drawing these continents apart. The evolutionary authors of an article in Scientific American, April, 1992, say the Atlantic Ocean is nearing its maximum width, in contrast to the continued Westward Ho! of South America envisioned by Dr. Ross. They consider it a repeat performance, with a single supercontinent forming and breaking up every five hundred million years or so.

In all the books I have seen which discuss continental drift, India is pictured as an island near Antarctica, but instead of drifting toward the Pacific Ocean, it went north and bumped into Asia, raising up the Himalayan Mountains.

ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Dr. Ross says astounding predictions can be made from the time future planets still circulated as nebulous rings around a central mass, which became the sun. He said, "As a matter of fact, this not only predicts the distance of each planet from the sun, it predicts the size of that planet, also predicts the constitution of each planet, what atmosphere it begins with, the initial condition of that planet, how many moons that planet will have, how big those moons will be, how far away they will be, and precise all the way down the line...." An astronomer assures me this is equivalent to hogwash. Dr. Ross continues this sentence, "not only for our solar system but for the six solar systems we can see besides our own." There is no other solar system that we can see, much less six!

Dr. Ross says the prediction for the earth's moon was that it would be about ten miles in diameter, and he says it was! But during the catastrophic splitting off of our current moon from the earth and its miraculous passing through the Roche limit, our original ten-mile moon was destroyed.

Then he tells about a planet between Mars and Jupiter. (Remember Bode's Law?) He says that as our moon was being pulled out of the earth, leaving the bed of the Pacific Ocean as a witnessing scar to confirm the event, the planet between Mars and Jupiter got too dose to Jupiter- within its Roche limit and was broken up, and that is the source of the asteroids. For emphasis he repeats this several times, not as a theory but as a fact. Checking astronomical books in libraries, I found the following: Seven authors hold that the asteroids came about because the gravitational field of Jupiter prevented hunks of matter in the original nebula from coalescing into a planet. Three say it was unlikely that a planet broke up. Two say that maybe a planet broke up, admitting the possibility of what Dr. Ross says. One agrees with Dr. Ross and one says the idea that the asteroids resulted from a broken up planet must be abandoned. How, then, can Dr. Ross speak so dogmatically as though he is stating a fact, when this idea is outvoted by modern astronomers?

GRAVITY

He tells that the chance of the law of gravity not working is one chance in 10 power of 200 Newton's law of gravitation, no doubt, is the most inclusive generalization ever made: Every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe with a force proportional to its mass and inversely to the square of the distance between them. What would cause this not to work?

However, gravity may appear not to work when a magnet lifts a paperclip from the top of a desk, but it is working. Gravity might even appear not to be working when a ball is thrown upward, but of course it is. Also gravity might appear not to work if a predominance of the randomly moving molecules in an object happened by chance to be moving upward in synchrony and the object levitates for a brief moment. But gravity still would be working. Furthermore, the probability of this happening would not be a definite number but would depend upon the size and weight of the object. It would not be the same for a grain of dust as for a freight locomotive.

THERMODYNAMICS

The second law of thermodynamics is one of the basic laws of science. It states that in a dosed system, that is, without an outside source of energy, randomness tends to increase. (Actually, in nature there is no dosed system available for observation except the universe as a whole.) A hurricane going through a lumberyard and a hardware store can randomize things but it will never construct a house.

When liquids of different temperatures are mixed, randomization may not seem as obvious but the molecules will become randomized and the mixture will be warmer than the cooler component and cooler than the warmer one. Equilibrium will be established when the temperature equals that of the environment. Here is what Dr. Ross tells his audience about the second law of thermodynamics. "Let me tell you about the second law of thermodynamics. If it doesn't work, then the water that you're drinking could cause your blood to boil or freeze. The second law describes how heat flows and we depend upon that heat flow with our lives. If I was concerned about the second law of thermodynamics, I'd be very much afraid of my blood boiling or freezing. But I'll tell you something. I don't lose any sleep over it." (Laughter from the audience.)He says that the probability of the second law not working is one chance in 10 power of 80. He does not say how he arrived at this but it would not be a fixed number. It would not be the same for water at room temperature rising one degree above room temperature as it would be for the same water causing blood to boil when ingested. But both would violate the second law. In the taped talk Dr. Ross tells the audience that the probability of thirteen Biblical prophecies, selected out of thirty-five hundred, coming true strictly by chance, is one chance in 10 power of 138. He does not explain on the tape how he arrived at this number, but it is by attributing very large odds against each one of these prophecies coming true, and the total number of prophecies from which the sample was selected is irrelevant. If the probability for each one of these thirteen prophecies coming true is taken as one chance in a million, the chance that all of them will happen is one chance in 1078. If the probability for each happening is reduced to one chance in a billion, the probability for all of them coming to pass is one chance in 10"7. This is still short of his 10 power of 138 figure by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. With his figure of 10 power of 58 he concludes that this "means that the Bible, based on these thirteen predictions alone, is proved to be 10 times more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics"(10 power of 138/10 power of 80= 1058). Flaunting figures like this impresses the naive, especially when the figures are used to uphold the Bible.

DNA AND RNA

To an audience Dr. Ross said, "Now by protein molecules I mean those twisted double helices called DNA and RNA.... Without these protein molecules, DNA and RNA, life would be impossible." DNA and RNA are not proteins. They have a quite different chemical composition and structure. In fact, some of the evolutionary scientists who discuss the origin of life argue over the question which came first, protein or nucleic acid. According to Sidney Fox, prominent origin-of-life scientist, the protein-firsters have won because, he says, amino acids contain their own instructions for their own sequences," in forming proteinoids. " It is through particular proteins that the genes of heredity- portions of the DNA molecules- are able to carry on their functions. DNA and proteins depend upon each other. How could either have come first?

APPARENT AGE

This brings us to the matter of "Apparent age at creation." Dr. Ross considers this under the heading "Gosse's 'appearance of age' theory." 18 In a nineteenth century book, Philip Gosse proposed such extreme views as: The earth's strata were created with the fossils already embedded and the first trees were created with deceptive rings of annual growth. Although Gosse always seems to be brought into discussions of apparent age at creation, no present spokesman for creation considers his views as significant. But Dr. Ross says, "Of late, however, Gosse's 'appearance of age' idea has seen a revival." 19 He refers to the Institute for Creation Research and to the book The Early Earth, by Dr. John C. Whitcomb Jr. 20 Dr. Whitcomb, of course, repudiates Gosse and mentions that if "appearance of age" be denied, New Testament miracles also must be denied. For example, when Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, the people assumed it had been produced from grapes that had grown slowly on vines, which in turn had matured during growing seasons in a vineyard. It had just been produced miraculously from water but it had the appearance of age.

In his leaflet ##P8906, Glossary of Science and Theology Terms, Dr. Ross has for the entry Appearance of Age, "The hypothesis that God created the universe, the earth, and life with (false) indicators of a nonexistent past. If this hypothesis were true, scientific measurements of great age conceivably could be reconciled with a recent creation interpretation of certain Biblical passages." Instead of accusing God of giving false indicators of a nonexistent past, creationists question certain assumptions evolutionists make in their measurements of time.

Actually, how could anything be created without appearance of age? Even if trees had been created as seeds, the seeds would have the appearance of age. If the first birds were created as eggs, the eggs would have the appearance of age. It would seem impossible for anything to be created without the appearance of age. The appearance of age is irrelevant to concepts of the time of creation.

In the same glossary he describes Ussher's chronology as a hypothesized calendar of Biblical events based on the assumption that no generations were omitted from the genealogies and that the numbered days of the Genesis creation account were consecutive 24-hour periods." Suppose fifty or a hundred generations were omitted from the Biblical chronologies (and it is not so), there still would be no significant change in the difference between Biblical chronology and the vast expanse of time required by the Big Bang scientists.

THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Dr. Ross says he knows evolution is still being taught in the schools. This may be the understatement of the decade. He says this is so " in spite of the fact that biochemists, physical scientists, and astrophysicists have long abandoned this theory as totally unworkable." (Now it seems that creationists have support from an unexpected source!) He shows the audience a high school textbook which he says pushes Darwinian evolution, but says he does not wish to criticize the book too strongly. He says that Darwinian natural selection and evolution are not the same, and indeed they are not. For nearly a century evolutionists have been saying the same thing, but also they have been saying just the opposite, whichever suits their purpose at the moment. A number of times and for various reasons evolutionists have been saying they might give up Darwinian natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, but nothing better can be found than neo-Darwinism- natural selection plus mutations and a few other things.

However, when the evolutionists spoke of giving up their faith in Darwinian natural selection as the mechanism of evolution they did not wish the public to think they were giving up their belief in evolution itself, so they tried to make dear the difference between natural selection as a theory and evolution as a fact.

According to Stephen J. Gould, natural selection triumphed in the 1940s as the important mechanism of evolution. 21 But now evolutionists are engaged in a highly emotional conflict, even with name-calling, in reference to Darwinian natural selection versus the "neutral" theory, in the finer details of evolution at the molecular level.

To show that natural selection is not evolution, Dr. Ross (correctly) uses the very same example that evolutionists use (incorrectly) to tell the public that natural selection is evolution. This is the highly touted case of the light and dark peppered moths (Biston betularia) in England.

Before the industrial revolution the moths were all essentially the light variety. As they rested on the trunks of trees in the daytime, they blended with the background and predatory birds had difficulty seeing them. The dark variety contrasted with the background and thus these moths were easily seen and captured by birds. Hence the population consisted almost entirely of light moths.

However, with the industrial revolution, contaminants darkened the trunks of trees and the situation with the moths reversed. Now the light moths were more easily seen and captured by birds. As would be expected, it did not take long until the population of moths in the industrialized areas consisted almost entirely of the dark variety. [This entire story has since been proven fraudulent- see seminar tape #4]

This is an example of natural selection but it is not an example of evolution (though the evolutionists use it as an example to convince the public that it is evolution and that therefore they must believe in evolution). The light and dark moths are merely varieties of the same species and they are not evolving into anything else. Actually, color varieties among butterflies and moths of the same species is not uncommon. But a scientific journal hailed this as "The most striking evolutionary change ever witnessed by man." 22

Evolutionists use the case of these moths and similar examples to convince the public that evolution is a fact. Having done this, they switch definitions and tell the public that since these moths prove evolution to be a fact, they now must be consistent and believe that phenomena that really would be evolution also are factual. Here is their logic: Birds catch more dark moths from a light background and more light moths from a dark background, therefore fish evolved into amphibians, amphibians evolved into reptiles, and reptiles evolved into birds and mammals, including man.

By the way, when environmentalists cleaned up the contamination and the tree trunks became light again, the population of dark moths soon was replaced once more with light moths. Is this then evolution in reverse?

In his discussion of the peppered moths, Dr. Ross tells his audience they are butterflies, which they are not. He says they originally were green, which they were not. (Apparently he thinks they were protected by blending with green leaves.) Then he says that as the green ones disappeared, both the light and dark ones were protected. How could 60th contrasting types be protected? By spending a short time in any public library he could have gotten the facts straight.

Dr. Ross says to an audience, "The average eyesight in this room is about three times more precise than it was in the time of Christ." How could this be known? Concerning the improvement in human eyesight, he says, "That was simply brought about by natural selection. It had nothing to do with the changing of our genes or chromosomes." Natural selection is based almost entirely on mutations of genes and chromosomes. To what else could it be attributed? Hybridization and polyploidy may have a minor role in natural selection but from an evolutionary point of view they are dead ends. The difference between the light and dark moths is due to a single mutation.

Explaining natural selection and eyesight he says, "It's simply a fact that those with poor eyesight had a greater chance of being killed in battle... that's all." It may be pointed out that anyone with such poor eyesight that he could not discern a man on a horse coming at him with a spear or a combatant attacking him with a sword, would be left at home and not be in the battle in the first place. Thus natural selection would be expected to preserve at least from death in battle, those in the population with very poor eyesight.

Concerning the evolution of the horse, long the showcase example of evolution through the evidence of the fossil record, he says the inaccuracy of the textbooks is that the gaps in the diagrams are attributed to missing links. He says instead that the gaps represent extinctions instead of missing fossils in a continuous series. As to the alleged extinctions he says that for years astronomers have been trying to tell biologists that about once every twenty million years or so a star explodes so close to the earth chat it showers the earth with gamma rays, killing all advanced forms of life.
(Modern evolutionists generally attribute large extinctions to catastrophic hits upon the earth by asteroids or large meteorites.)

Dr. Ross explains that in this manner our planet is regularly cleansed of advanced life. "This is true of every advanced form of life, whether it be the pig, the horse, the sheep, or whatever," he says. According to him, what is considered the earliest horse did not evolve into a higher form. Little Eohippus, the "dawn horse," now called Hyracotherium, "dine beast that looks like a hyrax," the coney of the Bible (Proverbs 30:26), was wiped out and replaced by the next form. Thus he seems to be saying that Eohippus (Hyracotherium) was made extinct and after its extinction was replaced by Orohippus, which after its extinction was replaced by Mesohippus, which in turn was replaced by Merychippus and then by Pliahippus and finally by Equus, the modern horse.

This would be a lot of extinctions and replacements during a long sixth day of creation. If each genus lived about twenty million years, the time between explosions of nearby stars, and at its extinction was immediately replaced by the next genus, that would come to about one hundred twenty million years, beginning well within the age of the dinosaurs and long before the expansion of mammalian species from rodent-sized creatures.

MAN

As to man he says (Leaflet #8909), "Starting about 2 to 4 million years ago, God began to create man-like mammals or 'hominids.' These creatures stood on two feet, had large brains, and used tools. Some even buried their dead and painted on cave walls. However, they were very different from us. They had no spirit. They did not have a conscience like we do. They did not worship God or establish religious practices. In time, all these man-like creatures went extinct. Then about 10 or 25 thousand years ago, God replaced them with Adam and Eve."

As to the Neanderthals (spelling commonly modernized to Neandertals), here are some excerpts from my book Evolution and Christian Faith 23 In 1956 a symposium was held in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Neanderthals. In preparation for this symposium William J. Straus Jr., eminent anthropologist of the Johns Hopkins University, and A.J.E.. Cave of the Department of Anatomy at St. Bartholomew's College in London, were permitted to examine the remains from which Marcellin Boule had made the original description.

This was the basis for the subsequent descriptions of the Neanderthals as inferior beings with bent knees and head thrust forward, widely circulated in textbooks ever since. Straus and Cave, of course, were familiar with the literature on the subject and they knew that the specimen was pathological, but they said they "were somewhat unprepared for the fragmentary nature of the skeleton itself and for the consequent extent of restoration required." 24 After a thorough investigation of the skeleton they concluded, "He cannot, in view of his manifest pathology, be used to provide us with a reliable picture of a normal, healthy Neanderthalian. Not withstanding, if he could be reincarnated and placed in a New York subway- provided he were bathed, shaved and dressed in modern clothing- it is doubtful whether he would attract any more attention than some of its other denizens." 25

They conclude that "there is no valid reason for the assumption that the posture of Neanderthal man... differed significantly from that of present day men... there is nothing in the total morphological pattern to justify the common assumption that Neanderthal man was other than a fully erect biped when standing and walking." 26

Two other anthropologists, C. Arambourg and E. Pattie, independently published their views at about the same time as Straus and Cave. They came to essentially the same conclusions, opposing the former view that Neanderthal man walked with knees bent and head thrust forward. 27

Another contributor to the symposium, Clark Howell, reported that in bones other than the skull, differences between the Neanderthals and modern populations are "much less marked than some writers in the past have been led to believe." He concluded that the skeletons of Neanderthals are basically modern and former views to the contrary are untenable. 28

Well-known anthropologist M.F. Ashley Montague wrote, "Neanderthal man walked as erect as any modern man, he did not have a bull neck, and he was not knock-kneed. And it has long been proved by many independent scientific investigations that the form of the brow or of the head has nothing whatever to do with intelligence. As a matter of fact, we have very good reasons to believe that Neanderthal man was every bit as intelligent as we are today." 29

Bringing the matter up to date, in a highly acclaimed book published in 1993, Erik Trinkaus, Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and author of more than a hundred articles on the Neanderthals, states, "Anatomically, the Neandertals are quite similar to ourselves, having a skeletal arrangement identical to ours, brains as large as ours, and - to the best of our knowledge, the capability to perform any act normally within the ability of a modern human."

The Neanderthal brain capacity on the average was larger than ours. They apparently buried their dead and left food and offerings and flowers with the bodies. Formerly classified as Homo neanderthalensis, the Neanderthals have been graduated to the same species as us, Homo sapiens.

The cave-painting Cro-Magnons, referred to by Dr. Ross, were very good Homo sapiens, that is, modern man.

Has Dr. Ross authority to say that the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons did not have a conscience or that they did not establish religious practices? Even savages today have their religions, though they generally appease demons instead of worshiping the Creator until instructed by missionaries. Apparently Dr. Ross means that God replaced the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons with Adam and Eve as He allegedly replaced Eohippus (Hyracotherium) with Orohippus.

THEISTIC EVOLUTION OR PROGRESSIVE CREATIONISM?

Theistic evolutionists accept evolution with its great lengths of time but believe it came about through acts of God instead of through natural processes.

Progressive creationists claim to be creationists. They believe God created certain basic types of animals and plants which then varied naturally as much as possible and when they could vary no further, God created more and higher types. Two important questions are: How much can living things vary in nature and how much time is acceptable?

Progressive creationists accept the time of the evolutionists. Belief in the extent of possible variation among plants and animals varies with progressive creationists. It seems most commonly to be accepted within the taxonomic category called the "order." For example, a weasel and a walrus belong to the same order. A giraffe and a hippopotamus belong to the same order. This implies that a weasel and a walrus could have been produced, in time, from the same ancestry, and this would be defended as creation. Similarly for a giraffe and a hippopotamus.

The American Scientific Affiliation was founded by a group of Christian men of science to defend the Bible against the writings of materialistic scientists, but it soon strayed. For example, a regular columnist for its journal accepted the "phylum" as the range within which natural variation can act. The phylum is the most inclusive taxonomic category under "kingdom." The phylum Chordata includes all creatures that have bones, including man, and some that do not.
According to that columnist, fish eventually could have produced men and apparently he would not have called that evolution. But, according to him, an ancestor of each of the invertebrate phyla would have been created. He said there is a problem because one would have to accept some creation! That is, one would have to accept at least as many acts of creation as there are phyla instead of accepting outright evolution!

In a public broadcast Dr. Ross appeared with an erudite evolutionist, a physical anthropologist. The tape of this broadcast is in contrast to taped sessions with naive and enthusiastic followers. Regarding a popular definition of evolution as "descent with modification," he said, "As long as the modification is understood in very broad terms, I'd be comfortable with that." In other words, if "descent with modification" (evolution) is understood to be broad enough to include processes which are not strictly natural but may include acts of God (theistic evolution) it is OK.

In this tape he says, "I would differ from, say, a theistic evolutionist [then he abruptly changes the subject and does not say how he would differ from a theistic evolutionist] and I don't put all the miracles of God at the beginning of the Big Bang. I see what takes place following the Big Bang as natural processes [evolution], of course controlled by God [theistic evolution], since He's responsible for the laws of physics. But that's what science is all about, studying these processes." In spite of his denial, this is an expression of theistic evolution.

Here the evolutionist interjects an approving, "Right!"

The dialog continues.

Dr. Ross. "Just because the ICR [Institute for Creation Research] says certain things about the Bible as literal doesn't mean it [what the ICR says] has the approval of Hebrew scholars."

Evolutionist. "Exactly, and similarly, I think that the very strict young-earth creationism, which is to my mind scientifically so unreasonable, has given conservative Christians a bad name."

Dr. Ross. "Yes, because I would take the position that it is impossible to take the Bible literally and come to the conclusion that the days are only twenty-four hours."

Evolutionist. "Yes. "

Dr. Ross. "They must be long periods of time."

Evolutionist. "Yes. "

Thus Dr. Ross accommodates himself both to enthusiastic fundamentalists and to gracious evolutionists.

BASIC CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE FROM NATURE?

Most important is the question, where does a theology which includes the Big Bang theory and long ages for the days of creation tend to lead doctrinally? Dr. Ross appears to be a theistic evolutionist or progressive creationist and espouses a theology by which a doctrine of salvation is obtainable from the observation of nature. In support of this he says that Job, "Without the aid of scriptures and in opposition to the religion of his peers, discerned all the elements of 'tine gospel,' the good news of how man can find eternal life in God." 31 How could Job have done that?

Job and others who lived before the final atonement for sin was made by our Lord at Calvary, who worshiped the true God and observed His statutes, went to paradise, also referred to as "Abraham's bosom." An example is give in the case of a beggar named Lazarus, who when he died was carried away by angels to Abraham's bosom (Luke 16:19-31). No doubt Job was there also.

Dr. Ross cites the first chapter of Romans. The heathen are without excuse for their idolatry because the evidences of creation are so dearly revealed in nature. But freedom from idolatry through recognizing that there must be a God of creation is a different matter from understanding salvation by grace and receiving Christ as personal Savior through accepting His atonement for sin. How can anyone know this through nature?

He also cites Colossians 1:23, which speaks in the King James Version about the gospel "which was preached to every creature which is under heaven." He says this means that "According to the Bible, everyone has the opportunity to know God," and thus, since they do not have the Bible, the heathen must be able to discern the way of salvation through nature. In the Greek the preposition is "in" not "to." A word for word transliteration goes like this: "...the glad tidings which were proclaimed in all the creation which [is] under heaven." "In all creation" is not precisely the same as "to every creature." Romans 2:14-16 may have a bearing on this.

We know there are heathen that have not heard the gospel of salvation through the atonement made by the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross at Calvary and we know there are those in our own country at the present time who have not heard, even among many who go to church regularly. God is the righteous Judge. It is not for us to judge but to minister the gospel wherever we can.

CREDENTIALS

In his publication Facts & Faith, Spring, 1993, there is a personal letter by Dr. Ross concerning those who criticize his ministry, in which he says, "Men with little or no formal training in the sciences or theology dogmatically contradict the science and theology of someone [himself] who has done postdoctoral research (in astronomy) at Caltech and has served for many years on the pastoral staff of a well-established evangelical church. Why do my attackers never check with people who know me personally?"

As to the implication that opposition is only from the unqualified, he must be aware of critical articles by qualified scientists at the Institute for Creation Research at El Cajon, California, 32 as well as others. As for myself, I have a Ph.D. in Zoology, taught at the college level for more than twenty years, have written extensively on the creation evolution issue including a book that went through thirteen printings, spoken in churches, schools, and conferences coast to coast in the U.S. and Canada, and been repeatedly on the radio and TV. But errors may be pointed out by anyone knowledgeable enough to defect them, whether professional scientist or housewife.

He told me his blunders are a thing of the past so I tried to obtain recent tapes, hoping to be able to substantiate this. But he informed me he discussed this with his staff and it was decided I should be denied access to the tapes of his latest graduate course for Simon Greenleaf University.

Their opinion was that my "reason for wanting the tapes is not to learn more about the latest discoveries proving the existence of the God of the Bible and the accuracy of the words of the Bible, but rather to discover new errors and mistakes [he] might have made while speaking." They added that "they are ready and willing to change their decision given some evidence of change of attitude on [my] part."

If it were merely a matter of many scientific blunders, there would be little value in writing an article to point them out. But when associated with the Bible and a theology of salvation through observing nature, as well as promoting theistic evolution or progressive creationism, these things need to be told.

An especially competent scientist who is a creationist tells me this article is too long. He says the naive followers of Dr. Ross will forgive him readily for his scientific mistakes and there is no need to mention so many of them, for "his errors are innumerable, and you could spend the rest of your life recounting them."

Another Christian critic makes the following evaluation. "Part of his benevolent image is that he remains cool under fire, a gentleman to the death, so to speak, one who is always kind to his sharpest critics as to his closest friends. He's magnificent at this. I've seen him and been totally impressed by his gracious good manners and kind concern for those who oppose him. In other words, he understands the psychology of argument, and that's why he scores big on the logic of argument. He appears to be logical, and to many people this appearance passes for logic itself."

In my experience with him by correspondence, on the phone, and meeting him personally, I have always found him courteous and calm and never excited or angry about anything.

Evolutionary theory is in conflict with basic Christian doctrine. If evolution is true, we are improved animals instead of fallen sinners in need of redemption. If evolution is true, we have no need of the Savior, there is no occasion for the Redeemer.

Footnotes

1. Asimov, Isaac. The Universe, 2nd ed. Walker. 1971. p. 211.
2. Ross, Hugh. Facts and Faith. 1:1:3. Spring/Summer, 1987. p. 3.
3. Anonymous. John R. Howitt) Evolution, "Science Falsely So-called." 20th ed. International Christian Crusade. 1981.
4. Howitt, John R Letter to the Editor, Journal of the American scientific Affiliation, 15:2:66. June, 1962. p. 66.
5. Ross, Hugh. The Fingerprint of God. 2nd ed. Promise. 1991. p. 141.
6. Moody, Paul Amos. Introduction to Evolution, 2nd. ed. Harper & Bros. 1952. p. 21.
7. Lindsey, Arthur W. Principles of Organic Evolution. C.V. Mosby.1952. p. 21
8. Osborn, Henry Fairfield. From the Greeks to Darwin, 2nd ed. Charles Scribner's Sons. 1929. p. 11.
9. Gardner, Eldon J. History of Life Science. Burgess. 1960. p. 93.
10. St. Irenaeus. Proof of Apostolic Preaching. Translated by Joseph P. Smith Sr. Newman Press. 1952. p. 16.
11. Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Translations of Writings of the Fathers.
Alexander Roberts,
James Donaldson, eds. T&T Clark. 1868. p. 123.
12. Ibid. p. 50.
13. Ibid. p. 54.
14. Ibid. p. 55.
15. Van Flandern, Thomas. Breakaway Moon. Science Digest, 90:4:82. April, 1982, p. 82.
16. Murphy, J. Brandon and R DamIan Nance. Mountain Building and the Supercontinent Cycle. Scientific American, 266:4:84, April, 1992. pp. 86,87.
17. Fox, Sidney. From Inanimate Matter to Living Systems. American Biology Teacher, 63:3:127. March, 1981. p. 133.
18. Ross, 1991. p. 142.
19. Ibid. p. 143.
20. Whitcomb, John C. Jr. The Early Earth. Baker Book House. 1972. p. 30.
21. Gould, Stephen Jay. Ever Since Darwin. W.W. Norton. 1977. p. 45.
22. Ketdewll, H.B.D., Darwin's Missing Evidence. Scientific American, 200:3:48, March, 1959.
23. Davidheiser, Bolton. Evolution and Christian Faith. Presbyterian and Reformed. 1969. p. 331 et seq.
24. Straus, william L. Jr. and AJ.E. Cave. Paleontology and the Posture of Neanderthal Man. Quarterly Review of Biology, 32:4:348, December, 1957. p. 351
25. Ibid. p. 359.
26. Ibid. p. 358.
27. Ibid. p. 362.
28. Howell, Clark. The Evolutionary significance of variation and varieties of "Neanderthal Man." Quarterly Review of Biology 32:4:330. pp. 334, 335.
29. Ashley Montague, M. F.Man: His First Million Years, 2nd edition. Signet Science Library, 1962. p. 58.
30. Trinkaus, Erik. and Pat Shipman. The Neandertals. Alfred A. Knopf. 1993. p. 412.
31. Ross, Hugh. 1991. Loc. cit. p. 181.
32. Impact, Numbers 217, 218. Institute for Creation Research, Box 2667, El Cajon CA 92021.
visit: WWW.BIBLE.CA

Dear Kent:

I have a whole page of notes and deep thoughts on creation. Hope you can call sometime.

I don't mean to belabor Hugh Ross. But I had not realized how extensive his plague has become within Christendom until I heard a tape by Ken Ham. Young earth creationists are now mocked more than ever because they point out that most Christians and theologians believe in evolution. And they are tragically correct. In supporting the Gap and Progressive Evolution, Christians have slept with the enemy and then wonder why there is a plague of violence in Public Schools where this religion is taught with the blessing and support of most Christians. In so doing they have sown the wind, but will reap the whirlwind.

Something more struck me about Hugh Ross Theology. He keeps harping the on Antarctica Penguins surviving the local flood. Well it occurred to me that if animals made it that far from Mesopotamia PRIOR to the flood, then much of the remaining animal kingdom would also have migrated across the entire face of the earth. And guess what? If animals had already filled the earth, then humans whom God had made to have dominion over these very animals would just as likely have also spread throughout the earth. This would be population projection of up to billions of people who are Post Adamic and Noah's contemporaries who did not sin, do not need a Savior, did not need to be destroyed, and would not destroyed according to the implications of Hugh Ross's theology of a local flood, or at least according to what would have to be the consequences of this theology. So where is the evidence of all these skeletons not buried in a non-existent global flood? It is very frightening to contemplate a local flood. Because this also means ONLY a local judgment.

Imagine that a small percentage of the earth about the size of Iraq is destroyed by Noah's Flood, while the rest of the earth and population (99+%) is not wicked at all or wicked enough to be judged, and hence does not need a savior. This would also mean that only a small percentage of today's population is descendants of Noah's family, the rest are descendants of the rest of the unflooded population of the earth...that is descendant's of a population that was not wicked at all or superior to those who were destroyed in a local flood. If Hugh Ross believes all human population was destroyed by local flood and the local animals except those people and animals on the Ark who were preserved, then he is saying that animals spread throughout the globe, but humans stayed put in a small fertile plain too dumb to run from a local flood. But wouldn't at least one human being (prior to the Flood) who is a descendant of a human population which was not primitive but rather intelligent enough to have speech, talk to God, build cities, who was curious enough to follow at least one of these animals who migrated to Antarctica and the rest of the globe, thereby spreading the population out at least as far as modern day Egypt, Turkey, or India? Wouldn't the descendants of Adam in the few thousand years up to Noah have migrated as far as they migrated after Noah? And wouldn't at least one human being be smart enough to even escape a local flood, e.g., those populations living near its boundaries. Recent discoveries in the Western Hemisphere of a number of ancient people such as the Kennewick man who has been dated to be several thousand years old, demonstrate how rapidly post Flood people migrated even to the ends of the earth. So Hugh Ross would have to confine the human population to any area the size of Iraq at the time of the Flood if he believes all humans were destroyed, while still maintaining a local vs. global deluge. But if his animal hypothesis of pre-Flood migration is to hold up, then human migration outside the region of a local flood would have to be maintained. But this is a logical and Biblical impossibility because Genesis records that ALL of the population of the earth, that is every nation, came from those who were scattered from the Tower of Babel. But Hugh Ross's Theology would suggest that all of those nations are along side the 70 initial Nations from Babel.

WHERE ARE THEY? They would have to speak the same language and tongue because they were not part of the Babel scattering. Some argue that it was the scattering the caused the different languages. But that is NOT what the Bible says. God confounded their speech and then and only then were there many languages and tongues. Hugh Ross would have to accommodate all of these nations and population outside of Mesopotamia. So we would have Hugh Ross nations and Noah's descendants nations living along side each other or co-mingling. Sound good? Only problem is that Genesis states that it is from Babel that ALL of the nations that spread throughout the earth. So we are left with believing Hugh Ross or the Bible. As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord and believe his word only.

Christ's own words "as in the days of Noah so shall be the coming of man" would have to mean only local wickedness. We would have to question or deny the rest of Christ's description of the birth pangs on the earth being only local. The Apostle Peter's references to the Flood and Fire could only be local. All of the plagues in Revelation could only be local...e.g. "a third of the trees burned up" only in some local region (not the entire earth)..."a third of the rivers turned to blood" must only mean the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates (where the 3 evil spirits come out in the end times). You can begin to see how this theology becomes preposterous. Another point about his local flood. Genesis points out that there are FIVE rivers which include the Tigris and Euphrates. It is amazing how powerful a local flood was to change the geology and topography of the earth so dramatically to leave only these two rivers, when every observed flood in the history of the earth leaves the same rivers once the flood stages recede (example: the great Mississippi Flood a few years ago). The WHOLE earth travaileth and groans for Christ's return because the WHOLE earth is corrupt and has been defiled. If only a local flood and judgment was necessary, there would be no sense in describing the whole earth in need of a savior and a need for his return to repossess what he alone has ransomed.

Hope this is illuminating in some way!

Blessings!
James Sundquist

Dear Kent,
Just heard your Oct 1 and Oct 8 Hugh Ross Debate.

Here are my comments:

1. Once again Hugh Ross maintains that the physics has not changed from Creation. Yet in the first debate he maintains that the moon receding from the earth was NOT linear, meaning not constant. So, once again he contradicts his own theory of uniformitarianism. Physics remaining the same rules out ALL miracles too.

2. He says the sun existing from the beginning and only became visible on the 4th Day of Creation. Visible to whom? Certainly not God as the Scriptures said he saw. Certainly not animals, they are created on the 5th Day. Certainly not Humans as they were not created until the 6th Day. Unless he is talking about plants that he says live (even though they did not have the breath of life: Nephesh). I guess his plants can both live and see. The next thing he will have them do is talk? Finally, if the sun were already there in day one it would be visible and would appear because the firmament (sky and clouds) were NOT there yet until the 2nd Day of Creation.

3. Regarding the Sabbath and his insistence that it was a day of indeterminate length. Christ himself demolishes this argument when he said that the Sabbath was made for man. If a day is even a thousand years (to man), no man has ever yet lived past 969 years. So no man has ever celebrated or existed for one sabbath day, let alone sabbath year. Even if man did celebrate and rest on the sabbath day, the sabbath day had to end at some point in order for the cycle to begin again to rest on the next sabbath day 7 days later. He maintains that Lev. 25 is referring to sabbath years as an analogy NOT an exact science. This is one of his most amazing blunders of all. Maybe Hugh Ross did not take these years literally, but you can be certain that God did not mean them as a parable. Hugh Ross is in good company. Hugh Ross is not alone in thinking they were not to be taken seriously or scientifically. The false prophets in Israel and the whole nation of Israel also did not believe or take these sabbatical years seriously. In fact, so exact were these 6 years of working the land and keeping the ground fallow on the 7th year that God told Moses that he would not only require Sabbath Year compliance, but multiply the years by seven and collect them from the land anyway and vomited out the Israelites and took them into captivity. And Daniel the prophet (who, unlike Hugh Ross, took those curses literally and scientifically, believed Moses and believed Jeremiah who also took these years literally and scientifically. Daniel even asks the Lord in prayer if these years were coming to and end? And of course, the angel of the Lord confirmed that they were (that is the literal scientific Sabbath years of the ground remaining fallow.)

4. If you are going to use "one day to the Lord is as a thousand years" Scriptures in Peter and the Psalms, then go ahead and make each day of Creation one thousand years. (You can't make a day a million years and be consistent with those Scriptures.) But even if you do this, you still have an earth that is only 13,000 years old (7,000 + 5,000)....insignificant time if the big bang theory is true. And as you well point out if each day is a thousand years, it causes a host of other problems beside a light source, such as plants waiting a thousand years to get pollinated.

5. As in #1 above where he states that physics are constant, the plate tectonics are constant. This collides with the Psalm the confirms the mountains were raised and the valleys pushed down in a rapid catastrophe of Noah's Flood in which case the physics and plate tectonics rate of movement were not constant. And once again it collides with his own statement in first debate that moon receding from the earth is NOT constant. But his constant rate plate tectonics would not even allow for a global Luciferian Flood catastrophe which would require changing decay rates.

6. Ross states that we can't observe the present, only the past. Doesn't this collide with Romans 8:18-20 where God says man is without excuse because he made them to understand from what he made? That is what we PRESENTLY see? Also, this passage states that man did understand and comprehend from the beginning of Creation. This demolishes his hominid Creation Gap pre-Adamic Race. Adam & Eve were the beginning (Christ's quote of the first marriage). Ross also states in his books and articles that hominids which he insists were the first manlike creatures before Adam did not comprehend God in order to worship him. This further contradicts the Apostle Paul's passage here in Romans that clearly states men DID comprehend from the beginning of CREATION.
James Sundquist

Dear Kent,
As you prepare for your next debate on Days of Creation with Hugh Ross, the Lord struck me with a Scripture that I knew but never saw in the following light as to pertain to Creation Days in Genesis.

Zechariah 14:5-8

5 You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake [1] in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. 6 On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost.

7 It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttime--a day known to the LORD. When evening comes, there will be light. 8 On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea [2] and half to the western sea, [3] in summer and in winter.

I had always thought of this Scripture in light of prophecy and the end of the Ages, to which it certainly is speaking. But just this last week I was so struck by God's description of this DAY as both a literal day but even more critically, he calls it a UNIQUE day. His description of this yet future UNIQUE day is certainly UNIQUE in its splendor and glory. But what the Lord showed me, and perhaps had already showed you years ago, was that if this is the only day since the beginning of Creation which HAS NO DAYTIME OR NIGHTTIME, MEANING 24 HOUR CYCLE OF NIGHT OR DARKNESS ON ONE SIDE OF THE EARTH WITH LIGHT (WHICH HE DIVIDED FROM DARKNESS) ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE EARTH. THEN GUESS WHAT?!?!? EVERY SINGLE OTHER DAY SINCE THE BEGINNING OF CREATION AND THROUGHOUT THE FUTURE MUST HAVE 24 HOUR DAYTIME AND NIGHTTIME CYCLES. IF THERE WERE NOT TRUE, THEN, THE DAY IN THIS SCRIPTURE WOULD NOT BE UNIQUE. Of course, there are other Scriptures to corroborate this. But it would be the only one you would need to demolish the stronghold of day/age theory. Christ himself refers to Zechariah and thus authenticates that he is a true Prophet from God. To further confirm that this was a literal day, Zechariah compares it to the literal days of the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. In this future unique day there will be another earthquake. The only other day which could challenge the uniqueness of this day would be Joshua's long day. But the important distinction here is that IT WAS STILL DARK ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PLANET FOR THE TWELVE HOURS. Zechariah's day was GLOBAL light. Further Scriptural corroboration is found in which describes Christ's coming as the lightning shines from the east to the west, meaning the whole earth is engulfed in white light, where Christ destroys the AntiChrist at the brightness of his coming (2Thes 2:8).
Also, Zechariah's unique day retains its uniqueness because it is the ENTIRE 24 HOUR DAY (not just a day which has an extra 12 hours). Of further interest in Zechariah's passage is that evening still comes, meaning the earth's rotation does not stop, and even this unique day is 24 hours long.
It is just that at nighttime when the sun goes down, it is still light (just not light from the sun).

This seems like a perfect Scripture for the Day/age segment of your debate. So much for Hugh Ross statement in the last debate that the Prophets support his day/age theory. Isn't it a lock???

What do you think of this illumination?
James Sundquist

Here is more proof that Hugh Ross is telling more lies. Here is the web site which shows the views of the signatories of the Westminster Confession confirming that they believe in Creation Days as 24 Hours. If it is not enough to trash the Prophets he now has questioned the writers of the Westminster confession. http://capo.org/creationRevise.html

Hope this helps!

I am very surprised that John Ankerberg did not nail him in his tracks on this one!

Thanks!
James Sundquist

Dear Kent,
Here is the letter I tracked down which Dr. David Menton (young earth physician) sent to John Ankerberg regarding his concerns. I wish I could have found this to send to you BEFORE your debate. But now perhaps you have another colleague (we must bind together in this war).
James ****

A Letter to John Ankerberg

Copyright © 1997, 1994 Missouri Association for Creation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
June 10, 1992

Mr. John Ankerberg
The John Ankerberg Show
P.O. Box 8977
Chattanooga, TN 37411

Dear John:

Following the events of the last several months, and particularly our phone conversation on May 27, I am deeply concerned that your TV series and book will not be as compatible with Biblical creation as at least I had envisioned when I first agreed to participate. My first concern occurred at the time of our video taping session at the Rhea County Court House when you expressed reluctance to having the members of our panel get involved with evidence for a young earth lest we lose the audience we were trying to reach. This surprised me since virtually all of the scientists you invited to participate on that day were young earth creationists.

Two of the members of the panel, Austin and DeYoung, discussed scientific evidence for a young earth in their presentations and I was disappointed that their views on this matter would be edited out of the tapes and book.

My next concern came when our conference phone calls and group mailings did not include Duane Gish. I began to suspect that, for some unexplained reason, Duane was out of the book and wondered if he might be edited out of the TV series as well.

Duane's views on creation and evolution are well known from his many debate tapes, videos and publications. I could see no reason why anyone who would invite him to participate in the first place, would have occasion to be either surprised or disappointed with his presentation.

Then the manuscripts for the book began to come in and with them more cause for concern. After seeing DeYoung's manuscript censored of any discussion of the age of the earth, I began to wonder how Steve Austin's original field research on Mt. St. Helens and the Grand Canyon could be purged of all evidence for catastrophism and a young earth. This really bothered me because Steve was perhaps the only person involved in your TV series and book who presented his own relevant laboratory and field research. In a phone conversation with Kurt Wise in December, I was told that Steve's paper was being completely rewritten.

When my last group of manuscripts arrived I noted that Steve Austin's manuscript was still not in and that now even his name was missing from the mailing list of those receiving manuscripts! Clearly something was going on behind the scene about which I was being kept in the dark. Finally, the whole mess was revealed to me in our last phone conversation. My worst suspicions were confirmed; of all the people who were asked to give up a weekend with their families and spend 12 straight hours taping your TV series on Creation, only Kurt Wise and I remained! If I understand you correctly, Duane Gish was eliminated for not being "up to date," Steve Austin was eliminated because he might turn off folks with his ideas on the age of the earth, and Don DeYoung was eliminated because "no one liked his manuscript!" Well, I for one, was quite pleased with the contributions of all three of these men at our taping session. I liked DeYoung's manuscript though I agree that it would have benefited from some revision (particularly the section on the planets).

Of the manuscripts still being considered for publication, I was especially pleased with those of John Oller, J. P. Moreland and Thaxton & Bradley. Oller covers some new ground in the creation- evolution controversy in providing compelling evidence that the whole human capacity for language could not have evolved in progressive steps over time but demands the intelligent design of a Creator (by the way, Oller too is one of those young earthers and ICR supporters!). Moreland and Thaxton & Bradley provide lucid digests of the main features of their important published books.

I must confess that at the time I read his manuscript, I was unfamiliar with Hugh Ross. I found his discussion of evidence for design in the universe to be interesting though a bit pedantic and convoluted in style. In my opinion, it is a pity that Ross is going to replace DeYoung in your book because I believe more people would have benefited from reading DeYoung's discussion of the unique biological suitability of the earth. Compare, for example, Ross' treatment of the effects that multiple moons might have on the earth with DeYoung's treatment of the same subject. For Ross, it's just another item in one of his several lists of "facts" while DeYoung discusses the implications of this surprisingly important point in a lucid and interesting way that would appeal to the average reader.

I have some far more serious reservations about some of the claims and implications in Ross' manuscript. I was deeply troubled by Ross' premise, in the very first paragraph of his paper, in which he insists that one's theology should be made to fit one's cosmology, and not the other way around! This is particularly disturbing given the necessarily speculative nature of the whole field of cosmology. Why should a Christian, of all people, insist that where the speculations of fallible men are in contradiction to the infallible Word of God, it is God's Word that will have to somehow give way. But then Ross doesn't appear to speculate in his manuscript, he simply declares that the universe is 17 billion years old, and then pompously demands that "all age stretching attempts to save non-theistic science should cease!" Most cosmologists are currently satisfied with their 17 billion years for the age of the universe, but if the plasma model for the origin of the universe replaces the Big Bang in popularity, and they demand hundreds of trillions of years, I don't doubt that Hugh Ross will find a way to grant it to them from his marvelously elastic Bible. After all, according to Ross, theology must be made to fit cosmology.

After reading his manuscript I was quite anxious to learn a little more about Hugh Ross and his views on creation. A friend in St. Louis called my attention to the ICR Impact articles 217 & 218 about Ross and loaned me a copy of Ross' book, The Fingerprint of God. I was shocked to see Ross dismiss Henry Morris, and apparently all creationists like myself who "hold to a 24-hour creation day," as folks who present "bogus evidences for a young universe" and who only succeed in "misguiding many whose science education and biblical training are inadequate to aid them in evaluation" (The Fingerprint of God, page 155). Wow! Are you sure he is one of the good guys John? I mean with people like this on our side we really don't need any opposition.

As I had feared, Ross' publicly expressed disagreements with creationists such as Henry Morris, go well beyond merely the age of the earth and universe. As is so often the case with progressive creationists he is left with a lot of time that needs to be somehow forced into the precisely defined days of Scripture and this leads to all sorts of mischief. Since one of the reasons progressive creationists accept a 4.5 billion year old earth is their uncritical acceptance of an essentially evolutionary interpretation of the geological column, they must inevitably deny the global nature of the Noachian Deluge so clearly taught in the Bible. This inevitably requires that the geological column show evidence of God's "progressive creation" rather than evidence of God's angry judgment of death and destruction in a world-wide flood. Then, since fossils in the geological column obviously include the dead remains of animals and men, the progressive creationist inevitably must argue that physical death did not come into the world by sin, as the Bible clearly teaches, but rather God intended from the beginning for animals and men to suffer pain and death. This finally denies the very Gospel of Jesus Christ who was sent into the world to save man from sin, death and the power of Satan.

One has only to examine Ross' own view of the Gospel to see the fruit of the dreadful cascade that begins with denying a literal six day creation. In his book The Fingerprint of God (pp. 180- 161), Ross declares that all that is necessary for man to be saved may be learned from nature itself, apart from the Bible.

Obviously, no one can learn from nature about the undeserved love of God in sending his only begotten Son Jesus Christ to save man from sin and death through His perfect life, death and resurrection. The Bible declares that this Gospel is an unfathomable mystery to unregenerate man and must be revealed in the Word of God (the Bible) through the power of the Holy Spirit. In contrast, Ross' "gospel" is reduced to the religion of universalism where any one can be "saved" by merely recognizing God in nature. How truly the Bible says: "a little leaven leavens the whole lump."

John, I fear that you may yet join James Dobson in his unqualified endorsement of Hugh Ross and progressive creationism. At least it was clear from our phone conversation that you intend to permit Ross to promulgate his views in your TV program and book despite what I gather has been a great outpouring of concern and reservations on the part of many Christians. I understand that it is your show and you are free to include or exclude any ideas or people you wish. Still, I fail to see why you have chosen to complicate things for your TV series and book (to say nothing of your viewers and readers) by bringing in a man who has publicly shown contempt for the intelligence, views and motives of many of the very sort of Christians you chose for your panel. If you prefer the views of Hugh Ross over men like DeYoung,

I fail to see why you initially sought the support of the ICR folks who for years have warned Christians about the grave Spiritual dangers of progressive creation and theistic evolution. Surely you could have assembled a large panel of scientists with strong academic credentials from the roster of the American Scientific Affiliation who would have been much more comfortable with such views.

John, while I am professionally concerned that people discover and understand science as accurately as possible, I am personally even more concerned that they find a saving faith in the redemptive work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This can only come to those who, with the help of the Holy Spirit, humble themselves before the Word and let God's Word be true though every man be made a liar. I don't believe that it is evolutionism that stands in the way of man's acceptance of the Gospel of Christ but rather man's unbelief in the Word of God itself. Surely we will not lead any one to Christ by attempting to rationally convince them of some form of creation at the expense of the clarity and inerrancy of God's Word. After all, Satan himself believes in creation. Perhaps a more limited objective of merely attempting to rationally convince people of intelligent design in nature may be a worthwhile goal on a Christian TV program such as yours, but we must not undermine the Word of God in the process.

I have tried to communicate to you how strongly I feel about your decision to eliminate the ICR scientists from your TV show and book, and to put in their place a man like Hugh Ross. We each have to do what we think is right before God no matter how much it may offend some men. I have decided that I can no longer be a part of the direction you are taking your TV series and book. I must ask you to let me join my friends from ICR and edit me also out of your TV series and book. If you choose, you are free to have someone write up any information or ideas I have shared with you but my name and participation must not be mentioned.

Sincerely,
David N. Menton

November 16, 2000
Dear Kent,

I want to extend to you and your family my profound gratitude for your invitation to be a guest commentator on your Hugh Ross debate as well as the privilege to do battle in the heavenlies with you. Jo's cooking and Marlissa and your staff's hospitality made me feel like royalty.

You asked me to send my final closing conclusion and comments to you for your final videotaping. You are certainly welcome to quote me below, either verbally, or as text on the screen in your final arguments that you videotape.

So here they are:

1. In the coming Millennium, God is going to RESTORE all things as it was prior to the Fall of Adam. Acts 3:21.

"If God is going to restore the earth in the age to come to Hugh Ross' version of his pre-Fall friendly and good world of death, destruction, disease, pain, sorrow, grief, mutations, predation, survival of the fittest, with NO Paradise, in which man had no dominion over animals, then I would prefer to live in the present age". James Sundquist

But in fact, God's description of the Millennium and the New Heaven and New Earth which is the restoration of all things (before the Fall of Adam) does not describe Hugh Ross' pre-Adamic world without sin.

2. Hugh Ross has changed the Sabbath Day from a blessing to man into a curse. Hugh Ross has given absolutely no mechanism or revelation for Adam to have any clue when his Sabbath Day is to end. Since a day is an indeterminate period of time, Adam has no way of knowing when the next Sabbath occurs in the next weekly cycle. If Hugh Ross does not know what a day is, then how is he able to plug a year into the speed of light formula?
Hugh Ross' Adam cannot tell time!

3. Hugh Ross has born false witness (one of the 10 Commandments) by lying and misrepresenting virtually ALL of the Church Fathers he says support his view of days in Creation being long ages. He further has lied about the positions held by the majority of the signatories of the Westminster Confession.

4. Hugh Ross has "gone the way of Cain" (Jude 1:11). "Woe to them". The way of Cain says did God say you can offer dead plants (grain offering) as atonement for sin, because plants die just like animals? Or did God say only a dead animal (shed blood) is an acceptable offering for the remission of sin. The answer is clear!

5. Hugh Ross suggests that we can obtain information for the conduct of our lives from the stars which are SILENT. While the Bible tells us through the Apostle Paul that faith cometh by HEARING. How does one believe on one whom they have not heard? (Romans 10:14-8). If the stars are on equal footing with the Bible, then why weren't the astrologers able to interpret the King Nebuchadnezzar's dream? And why does the Bible condemn seeking guidance from the stars otherwise known as astrology. Which stars tells us we are a sinner? Which stars predict judgment or future events? The answer: ONLY the bright and morning star.

6. Hugh Ross submits that what can't be learned from the stars can be learned from nature. This is pantheism. Are stars and nature (his 67th book of the Bible) able to reprove, correct, and instruct in all righteousness?

7. Hugh Ross suggests that the physics God created holds the universe together. This is not true JESUS CHRIST holds everything together.

8. You judge a tree by its fruit. Hugh Ross' tree is laden with the evolutionary fruit of the geologic column. Can a thorn bush produce figs? Why does he seek the counsel of the ungodly?

9. Hugh Ross's version of Noah's Flood has moved the boundaries God has set in Psalms 104:9.

10. In Hugh Ross' pre-Adam world, unreasoning hominid animals of brute instinct were able to roam and fill the whole earth, yet Man who as Jesus said is better than the birds, is not smart enough to figure out how to have populated the earth outside of Mesopotamia or escape a local flood.

11. Hugh Ross' faulty interpretation of God's past works paves the way to a faulty assessment of Biblical history and God's predicted future events in eschatology, in which figurative use of language disintegrates virtually any possibility that God ever meant anything literally and straightforwardly.

12. Hugh Ross' Adam did not die physically for sinning. God's Adam returns to the dust because of sinning. And this is not physical death? Where else in Scripture does death NOT mean physical death?

13. Hugh Ross is able to measure the Universe and God, yet Job, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, say the opposite. You asked for the verse in Ecclesiastes which talks about what is unfathomable to man. I believe you are referring to Ecc. 3:11-12. Is Hugh Ross smarter than the wisest man who ever lived, that is Solomon who stated that man can not fathom (or measure) what God has done from the beginning to the end? Ecc. 3:11-12

I must finally commend you and support you in exposing and reproving Hugh Ross who calls himself a brother, if indeed he is a brother. Woe to them that call good evil, and evil good, which is exactly how he has described his pre-Adamic world.

I hope that these final thoughts contribute to you concluding remarks on our commentary on Hugh Ross' theology.

God bless you richly, and thank you again for the opportunity to serve you and work with you.

If the Lord leads, perhaps in some ways, I can enlarge your tent and help you further expand your ministry throughout the world and to the ends of the earth and take some of your overflow invitations!

God bless you dear brother,

James Sundquist
http://msnhomepages.talkcity.com/SpiritSt/billdonahue/Hugh_Ross_Index.html and www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4128.asp

Basic Problems:

We need Hugh Ross to tell us what the Bible says.
ICR has offered to debate Hugh and he refused Hugh's Position is unscriptural, Hugh's thinking and Bible study is crippled by and evolutionary bias- see Col 2:8 "He has been spoiled by a heathen philosophy."

He appeals to secular authority instead of scripture.
You are doing what Satan did in the garden of Eden- Yea hath God said-six days?
If it does not mean six days then any interpretation of the Bible is hopeless and we all need a guru like you to tell us what it means. You have become a barrier between the average Bible believer and his Bible just as the priests of other religions have done.

Magicians rely on dazzling the audience in order to deceive. Ex. Kids with laser are unable to comprehend what is happening to them. Rossites dazzle with high-sounding quotes and appeals to authority.

Questions to ask:
Debate w/ Hugh Ross 7-27
Thanks for doing this.
Main points seem to be: Majority Opinion - starlight.
How do you explain the observed changes in the speed of light?
Light-year is a distance not a time!

Why you believe the earth/universe is billions of years old?

According to your gospel:
Did God literally make Adam from the dust of the ground and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life?
Was Eve really made from a rib?
Did Adam live to be 930 years old as we know years today?

If Adam had not sinned would he have died?
What effects did Adam's sin have on the creation?
Where does the Bible teach this?
Was the flood of Noah worldwide? You say it was "universal". Isn't this deceptive rhetoric for you followers? Why not spell out what you mean clearly?
Why didn't people migrate out of Mesopotamia over the thousands of years?

Was there animal or Neanderthal death before sin?
Gen. 1:29 Did Animals eat meat before Adam sinned?
Were dinosaurs made on day 5? fish or fowl on day 6- when were animals?

Since thorns and thistles are found in the fossil record when did they begin to grow on earth?
What does Acts 3:19 mean?

"Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;
And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: 21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began."

Does this mean that He will restore all things to conditions of suffering and death that we already have today? If God will restore all things does that mean there will be suffering, bloodshed, disease, tears and death for millions of years? How will we get "incorruptible" bodies in the twinkling of an eye?

I Cor. 15: "Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 56 The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Do you feel the Lord will come soon and why? Is the 6000th year drawing near? What about the urgency that many feel for the coming of the Lord?

In Gen. 1:31 God said He was done, what did He mean?
How do you explain fossil graveyards?
  Polystrata fossils?
  Dinosaurs?
  Behemoth?
  Dragon stories?
  Giant insects in the fossil record?
  Human artifacts in coal and under table mountain?
  200 foot thick coal seams?
  Gentry's polonium halos?
  Alaska 300 foot trees buried standing up under 1000 feet of permafrost?
  Ice layers?
  Oil formation?
  Sahara?
  Why do we still have comets?
  Why is there so little sediment on the ocean floor?
  Do you believe the ocean floor has magnetic lines that have reversed?
  If a day is not a day, what is an evening? Morning?
  Of the hundreds of times evening or morning is used in the Bible please name 1 where it is not talking about a normal 24 hr day.

  Why is a pre Adamic worldwide flood no problem for you even though it is never mentioned in the Bible yet the one that is clearly taught in the days of Noah is such a problem?
  If the Sabbath was made for man as Jesus said how long was this day?

Hugh claims that nature is God's 67th book. Nature is not the 67th book! We must go by God's written word since we cannot know God by nature alone.

Ecc. 8:17 "Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labour to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea farther; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it."

When you look at nature you cannot tell what God is doing. 3:10-11 Cannot tell what God is doing from beginning to end. Ps 40:5

"Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered."

II Thes. 2:8-12 "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

The penalty for not accepting God's truth is delusion. The text says delusion not illusion. Illusion is a trick in the object itself that affects its reality. A delusion is a trick in the mind of the observer.
If you don't believe what God has revealed in his word you will be deluded by nature.

The Genesis Question

Serious biblical and scientific errors deceive evangelicals into thinking that billions of years are 'OK'.

Published by NavPress Publishing Group
P.O. Box 35001, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80935

by Jonathan Sarfati

From Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 13(2):22-30, 1999.

Introduction

The astronomer Hugh N. Ross now seems to be the world's most prominent 'progressive creationist' (PC). While he is insistent about distinguishing himself from 'theistic evolutionists' (TEs), Ross adopts the same basic philosophical approach. That is, he makes uniformitarian (i.e. essentially materialistic, billions of years, etc.) 'science' his authority over Scripture.

This means that he must try to fit billions of years into Scripture, with corollaries of a local flood and pre-Adamite soulless man-like creatures, and death of nephesh animals before sin. The only real difference between the two positions is that PCs deny transformism, the changing of one kind into another. Amazingly, Ross claims that his approach is 'a literal reading of the Genesis creation chapters' (p. 86). This is surely a very non-literal usage of the word 'literal'!

Ross's popularity in evangelical Christendom is based on several factors:

* His books are published by the once-biblical NavPress, the publishing arm of the Navigators.
* Ross name-drops a number of Christian leaders who appear not to realize that Ross's departure from Scripture involves far more than the age of the earth.

It's clear that for the last few years, NavPress has opposed straightforward biblical creation. In this latest Ross book, NavPress appear to have even resorted to somewhat misleading marketing tactics, i.e., the dust-jacket has some 'praise' from allegedly prominent authors, one of whom is:

SAMUEL CONNER, PH.D.
candidate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Formatted as above (starting a new line and changing the font style from small capitals to italics after 'Ph.D.'), this gives the first impression to a skimming reader that Conner has a Ph.D., because only after careful inspection is it clear that he is a Ph.D. candidate, i.e. not actually qualified.

The canonization of 'Nature'

The worst part of Ross's teaching is the gross liberties he takes with the scriptural text. He does this to fit the canonical 66 books into what he calls the '67th book', nature. (1) What he means by 'nature' is the uniformitarian interpretation of nature. However, the creation is cursed (Genesis 3:17-19, Romans 8:20-22) and man's heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) and the thinking of a godless man is 'futile' (Romans 1:21), while Scripture itself is 'God-breathed' (2 Timothy 3:15-17). So a biblical Christian should not re-interpret the perfect, unfallen Word of God according to fallible theories of sinful humans about a world we know to be cursed (Genesis 3:17-19, Romans 8:20-22).

Ross's heterodox canonization of nature has been thoroughly rebutted by Van Bebber and Taylor. (2) This book is essential reading for defenders of the biblical world-view, as it answers point-by-point Ross's earlier theological and historical errors. (1) However, The Genesis Question repeats many of the same errors.

Ignorance of Hebrew

Ross routinely gives audiences the impression of being very familiar with Hebrew. However, in a meeting with Dr. Ross on 12 April 1999, Dr Russell Humphreys asked Ross in Hebrew: 'Do you speak Hebrew?' and Ross was clearly non-comprehending. Humphreys then said (in English): 'You must respond in Hebrew', to which Ross admitted his inability by responding (also in English) 'I can't.' Humphreys hastens to add that he himself is not expert in Hebrew, and nor am I, but we at least know enough to understand the question and to reply using the Hebrew word for 'no'.

Ross's ignorance of Hebrew shows when he tries to discredit the common creationist identification of behemoth in Job 40:15-24 with a sauropod, because he believes the dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. Ross writes (p. 48): 'The Hebrew word for "behemoth" appears in its plural form, behema, ...' However, even beginners in Hebrew know that -a is often a feminine singular and -oth is a feminine plural. So Ross got it back-to-front: behema is the singular form, while behemoth is grammatically plural. It is a figure of speech known as an intensive plural or plural of majesty, where 'the referent is a singular individual, which is, however, so thoroughly characterized by the qualities of the noun that a plural is used', (3) 'beast of beasts'. The context says that behemoth is the largest beast God made. And Job 40:17 says: 'His tail sways like a cedar' which certainly doesn't fit Ross's suggestion of a hippopotamus (unless it was a bonsai cedar, maybe).

Fanciful eisegesis (4)

One of Ross's major aims is to show that Genesis can be fitted into uniformitarian astronomy and paleontology. To avoid the plain teaching of Genesis - that land dinosaurs were created with man and after whales, Ross also claims (pp. 52-53):

'The list [of creatures created on Day 6] does not purport to include all the land mammals God made. ... Though remes refers occasionally in Hebrew literature to reptiles, the opening phrase of Genesis 1:25 makes it clear that these are mammals. ... Both behema and chayyah refer to long-legged land quadrupeds. The former group encompasses those that easily can be tamed or domesticated for agricultural purposes, and the latter, those that are difficult to tame but have the potential to become excellent pets. Remes refers to short-legged land mammals, such as rodents, hares, and armadillos.'

However, this is typical of Ross's imaginative eisegesis. Genesis 1:25 teaches nothing so restrictive. And his analysis of Hebrew terms has no basis - Ross's own source, the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), (5 doesn't support him. Chayyah is simply a generic word for a living creature although it can often refer to wild animals (TWOT 1:281) - the phrase nephesh chayyah is used of sea creatures in Genesis 1:20, and of man in Genesis 2:7. Behema refers to both wild beast and domesticated animal (TWOT 1:92). Remes describes small creeping animals 'especially reptiles' (TWOT 2:850). The TWOT shows that Ross is 'over-defining' these terms.

Van Bebber and Taylor pointed out the same errors in Ross's earlier book, and it's tiresome to see Ross repeating discredited nonsensical arguments time after time.

Note that even if we grant Ross's contention that remes means 'short-legged land mammals', it still doesn't match the uniformitarian order in the fossil record. Such creatures are alleged to have appeared millions of years before whales, which Ross identifies as created on the millions-of-years-long 'Day 5'. And mesonychids, the alleged predecessors of whales, were certainly 'long-legged mammalian quadrupeds', so would fit even Ross's descriptions of 6th-day creatures.

Those who promote Ross's material as sound science should thus think again. It is doubtful that secular people will be impressed by Ross's claim that the order of Genesis matches 'science'. When they point out exceptions, Ross redefines terms so that Day 6 doesn't really refer to any creature that appeared before whales. And when all else fails, he claims that the 'days' overlapped. (7)

Insightful exegesis or delusions of grandeur?

One key point about Ross's 'harmony' of Genesis with billions of years is to claim that Genesis 1:2 ff. is written from the viewpoint of an observer at the earth's surface. He claims (p. 21):

'The frame of reference, or point of view, for the creation account suddenly shifts in Genesis 1:2, from the heavenlies that make up the entire physical universe to the surface of planet Earth. For whatever reason, perhaps because it comes so abruptly, most readers - even scholarly commentators - miss the shift. I am convinced that my absorption in science prepared me to see it.'

So Ross, despite a demonstrable ignorance of even the most basic Hebrew and an inability to use Hebrew lexicons correctly, discovers amazing insights, thanks to 'science'. This claim by Ross, like so many others, is a denial of the perspicuity of Scripture. I.e., God's people were left entirely in the dark about Genesis until modern uniformitarian theories were invented - mainly by bibliosceptics.

More likely, this alleged frame shift has been missed because it is not in the text! The real frame-shift to the Earth is very clear in the Hebrew, and occurs in Genesis 2:4, not Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:12:3 is a summarized account of the whole creation, while Genesis 2:4 ff. focuses on the creation of mankind (in chapters 7 and 10, Ross rightly rejects higher critical theories that claim that Genesis 1 and 2 are contradictory creation accounts). This shift is clear from the boundary marking phrase 'These are the generations (toledoth) of the heavens and of the earth', or better, 'This is the account ...'. Also, in Genesis 2:4 , the order 'heaven and earth' changes to 'earth and heaven', alerting the reader to focus on the earth.

Ross applies this alleged Genesis 1:2 frame shift to assert that what really happened on the fourth 'day' was that the sun and other heavenly bodies 'appeared' when a dense cloud layer dissipated after millions of years.

Disks around stars, by an amazing leap in logic, supposedly show that all planets, including the Earth, started with opaque atmospheres of hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia (p. 26). But it would not take a very sophisticated knowledge of science to know that hydrogen couldn't be held by earth's gravity, and methane and ammonia would be photolysed quickly. These gases are transparent, incidentally.

Ross's ideas are not only fanciful science, but bad exegesis of Hebrew. The Hebrew word 'asah means 'make' throughout Genesis 1, and may be used interchangeably with 'create' (bara'), e.g. in Genesis 1:26-27. It is pure desperation to apply a different meaning to the same word in the same grammatical construction in the same passage, just to fit in with atheistic evolutionary ideas. If God had meant 'appeared', then He would have used the Hebrew word for appear (ra'ah), as when the dry land 'appeared' as the waters gathered in one place on Day 3 (Genesis 1:9). This is supported by Hebrew scholars who have translated the Bible into English. Over 20 major translations were checked, and all clearly teach that the sun, moon and stars were made on the fourth day.

See also How could the days of Genesis 1 be literal if the Sun wasnt created until the fourth day?

Days of Creation

To justify his interpretation of the six creation days of Genesis 1 as millions of years long, Ross writes (p. 65):

'In English, the word day enjoys flexible usage. We refer to the day of the dinosaurs and the day of the Romans, and no-one misunderstands our meaning. But we recognize this usage as figurative, acknowledging just two literal definitions: a twenty-four hour period, from midnight to midnight, and the daylight hours (roughly twelve, but varying from one latitude and season to another).'

Because 'day' (Hebrew yôm) in some contexts can have a non-literal meaning, Ross feels justified in assuming that a non-literal meaning is acceptable in the particular context of Genesis 1. But such an interpretation shows that he could benefit from elementary training in exegesis, e.g. the book Exegetical Fallacies (10) by the evangelical New Testament scholar Dr Don Carson. Ross commits a classic case of a fallacy that Carson called:

'Unwarranted expansion of an expanded semantic field. The fallacy in this instance lies in the supposition that the meaning of the word in a specific context is much broader than the context itself allows and may bring with it the word's entire semantic range.'

Ross's fallacy can be illustrated by the following sentence that has several uses of the word 'day'.

'In my father's day, he would go to bed early Sunday evening and rise early in the morning of the following day, and spend the next six days travelling, during the day, to cross the whole country.'

Of course 'my father's day' is an indefinite period of time. But this doesn't mean that it's legitimate to interpret the 'six days traveling' as anything but ordinary days. And the combination of evening and the next morning are another way of showing that his bedtime was contained in one ordinary day, not an indefinite time period.

Genesis 1 modifies the creation days with both 'evening and morning' and a number, almost as if God was trying to make it as obvious as possible that they were ordinary days. Exodus 20:8-11 reinforces the point that the six days of creation followed by a day of 'rest' were the basis for the Israelites' six-day week and seventh day Sabbath. The phrase 'during the day' is also obviously the daylight hours, as per Genesis 1:5.

Ross also claims (p. 65): 'In biblical Hebrew, no other word besides yôm carries the meaning of a long period of time' and cites his own book and TWOT. Again, Van Bebber and Taylor pointed out that Ross's own source contradicts him, stating that the Hebrew olam and its Greek equivalent aion (from which we derive the word 'eon') often means 'long age'. There were plenty of other words that God could have used if He had wanted to teach long periods of time. God could also have used phrases like 'x myriad myriad years ago' to teach ages of hundreds of millions of years. For a less precise indication of vast ages, God could have compared the years to the number of sand grains or stars. Yet God did not use any of these - rather, He emphasized literal days.

Does the seventh day continue?

Ross claims on p. 64:

'Each of the six creation days closes with the refrain: "There was evening, and there was morning," then the day's number. The statement suggests that each day had a start time ... and an end time. However, the refrain is not attached to the seventh day. Its closure is missing.

... its absence from the account of the seventh day can be taken as a meaningful hint: the day has not ended.'

From this, Ross has concluded that the other creation days could be long ages. However, the systematic theologian, Dr Douglas Kelly, responded to the same argument from Ross as follows:

'To say the least, this places a great deal of theological weight on a very narrow and thin exegetical bridge! Is it not more concordant with the patent sense of the context of Genesis 2 (and Exodus 20) to infer that because the Sabbath differed in quality (though not - from anything we can learn out of the text itself - in quantity), a slightly different concluding formula was appended to indicate a qualitative difference (six days involved work; one day involved rest)? The formula employed to show the termination of that first sabbath: "And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made" (Genesis 2:2) seems just as definite as that of "and the evening and the morning were the first day".'

Ross also argues that Hebrews 4:1-11 teaches 'that the seventh creation day began after the creation of Adam and Eve, continues through the present, and extends into the future.' However, again Ross repeats an argument rebutted by Van Bebber and Taylor. Hebrews never says that the seventh day of creation is continuing to the present; it merely says that God's rest is continuing. If someone says on Monday that he rested on Saturday and is still resting, it in no way implies that Saturday lasted until Monday. Kulikovsky carefully analyses the grammar of Hebrews 4 and concludes:

'The "rest" of Hebrews 4 clearly refers to the Kingdom of God ... Nowhere in the text is it equated with the seventh day of creation, nor is there any grammatical or contextual data suggesting any such equation.'

The history of mankind

A straightforward reading of the biblical genealogies according to the reliable Masoretic text shows that Adam was created about 4000 BC, and this was on the 6th day of creation. And Jesus said: 'But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female' (Mark 10:6), not billions of years later. But Ross dates Adam at about 35,000-47,000 BC, based on secular chromosome research (p. 111) i.e. almost at the end of billions-of-years old creation.

Since he also accepts the 'earlier' evolutionary 'dates' for other hominids, Ross concludes that they have no relationship to man, although they buried their dead, made tools and musical instruments, painted pictures, etc.

Biblical genealogies

Ross (pp. 108-110) points to some biblical genealogies that have gaps to claim that the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies are largely incomplete. He also claims (p. 109):

'The words translated in to English say this: "When X had lived Y years, he became the father of Z." Someone reading the same passage in Hebrew would see a second possibility: "When X had lived Y years, he became the father of a family line that included or culminated in Z."'

However, none of Ross's examples of gaps in genealogies (Matthew 1:89 vs 1 Chronicles 3:10-12) mention the age of the father at the birth of the next name in the line, so are irrelevant.

Ross also points out that father can mean grandfather or ancestor, while son can mean grandson or descendant. But Ross again errs by unwarranted expansion of an expanded semantic field.(10) The (Genesis 5 and 11) genealogies say that X 'begat sons and daughters' implying that Z is likewise a son of X in this specific context.

And even if we grant that Z is a descendant of X, Z is always preceded by the accusative particle 'et, which is not translated but marks Z as the direct object of the verb 'begat' (wayyoled). This means that the begetting of Z by X still occurred when X was Y years old, regardless of whether Z was a son or a more distant descendant. The Hebrew grammar provides further support - wayyoled is the hiphil waw-consecutive imperfect form of the Hebrew verb yalad - the hiphil stem communicates the subject participating in action that causes an event e.g. Seth as the begetter of Enosh. No wonder the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37/38-c. 100) saw no gaps in the genealogy. (21, 22

James Barr, then Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, wrote in 1984:

'... probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: ... the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story.' (23)

Barr, consistent with his neo-orthodox views, does not believe Genesis, but he understood what the Hebrew so clearly taught. It was only the perceived need to harmonize with the alleged age of the earth which led people to think anything different ã it was nothing to do with the text itself.

Ross also points out that Luke 3:36 has the extra name Cainan. But this is spurious, because this name was probably not in the original autograph, but inserted later, (24) certainly after the time of Josephus. (25, 26)

Secular history

Ross also uncritically claims that missionaries teaching a literal Genesis were discredited by:

'Chinese historical accounts placing Chinese national origins earlier than 4004 BC. ... The same reaction comes today from ... Australian Aborigines, who date back to 25,000 BC .... All are firmly established dates.' (p. 108).

However, the Encyclopædia Britannica says on China: 'The first dynasty for which there is definite historical material is the Shang, or Yin (18th-12th BC).' (27) The Australian Aborigines were an oral culture, without writing, so their 'dates' are not based on historical records but on 'dating methods'. However, some of these claim that Aborigines existed before even Ross's 'date' for Adam - what will happen to his apologetics if such dates become widely accepted?

Floundering on the Flood

Some Ross supporters like Dr James Dobson, of Focus on the Family, evidently believe the overwhelming biblical evidence for a global Flood, but fail to see the inconsistency of this position with billions of years. A global Flood would have laid down a vast thickness of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock in a year, which would nullify much geological 'evidence' for billions of years. Conversely, accepting that the fossil record was formed over billions of years eliminates any evidence for the Flood. Ross is more consistent, and believes the Flood was restricted to Mesopotamia.

Local Flood arguments

Ross points out that there are passages where 'all the earth' and 'whole world' are used in a non-global way. Again, Ross is guilty of unwarranted expansion of an expanded semantic field. (10) In the Flood account, the frequency of the Hebrew word kol (all, every) indicates that God is going out of his way to emphasize the universality of the Flood. (28) Genesis 7, NIV reads:

19 'They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. ...

21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished - birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.

22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.

23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.'

A question could be asked of Ross: 'Just suppose, for the sake of the argument, that God had wanted to teach a global Flood - how could He have said it more clearly than in Genesis 7?'

Too little room for the animals?

Ross caricatures belief in a global Flood, parroting discredited skeptical/atheistic arguments against the Ark. Ross ignores key books like John Woodmorappe Noah's Ark -- a Feasibility Study, (29) which answers nearly all his objections.

Kinds and species

Creationists, arguing from the text of Genesis, believe that Noah took two of every kind of land vertebrate animal. Ross distorts this into a claim that creationists believe two of every single species had to go on board. He also claims that the fossil record documents that 'half a billion to a billion new species of life arose between the Cambrian explosion ... and the arrival of human beings' (p. 150). But the number of actually cataloged fossil species is only about 200,000, about 95 % of which were marine invertebrates which Noah was not required to take on board anyway. The 'billion' is probably estimated from the transitional forms needed if neo-Darwinism were true, and even then is a huge exaggeration. And it's likely that many so-called fossil species and even genera within a family were merely varieties of a single polytypic 'biological species'. This is true today, as shown by many cases of hybridization between members of different 'genera'. (30)

Ross regurgitates the skeptical nonsense that it was impossible to derive all current species from the relatively few kinds on board the Ark, unless super-rapid evolution occurred. Ross effectively believes in fixity of species, in ignorance of proven speciation within a kind. (31) Skeptics would thus find him an easy target.

However, not all change is evolution, in the sense of molecules-to-man, which requires an increase of genetic information, just as not all monetary transactions are automatically profitable ones. Many varieties can arise rapidly from an initial population with large genetic variety. If this population splits into isolated small populations, each subgroup may carry a fraction of the total genetic information. Later information-losing mutations, e.g. in proteins recognizing 'imprinting' marks, (32, 33) can result in reproductive isolation, thus a separate 'biological species'.

Rapid production of 'varieties' can be shown in humans: it is well known that a marriage between two mulattos (people with one black and one white parent each) can produce children with a large variety of skin colors. Of course it couldn't happen quickly by evolutionary means, because they must rely on random mutations to generate new genes, and slow substitution over many generations to establish them in the population. (34)

This is why both Eskimos and native equatorial south Americans have mid-brown skins and haven evolved very white or very dark skins - the relevant information is simply not present. Such 'people groups' today are highly specialized, with less genetic variation than mulattos (and Adam and Eve), which is why they produce offspring of limited variety.

Because of Ross's lack of knowledge of genetics, he postulates direct divine intervention at Babel to introduce 'racial' traits into separate populations (pp. 177-178). The Bible doesn't even hint at this. Ross admits that it's a 'God of the gaps' explanation, which would be unnecessary if he had read any of our books. Ross says that the different 'racial' characteristics were designed to aid man's dispersal. This is disturbing - although Ross does repudiate racism and sees nothing wrong in 'inter-racial' marriages, this theory almost implies that God designed racial prejudice.

If Ross had read basic creationist books, e.g. Stones and Bones, The Answers Book or What is Creation Science? [or seen the brief Internet article How could all the human races come from Noah, his three sons and their wives?], he wouldn't need to resort to such daft explanations, which hardly give the would-be Christian apologist relying on his books any credibility.

'Fear of the millions'

Ross claims that a main motivation of those opposing billions of years is fear that it would make evolution possible, hence the above subheading on p. 92. As usual, Ross's claim betrays a willing ignorance of creationist literature as well as ignorance of evolution/variation as shown above. Many years before Ross wrote any of his books, leading creationists like Dr Duane Gish made it very clear that they believed the earth was only thousands of years old, on both biblical and scientific grounds. But Gish also strongly pointed out that evolution would be impossible even if billions of years were granted, e.g.:

'Therefore, whether the earth is ten thousand, ten million, or ten billion years old, the fossil record does not support the general theory of evolution.' (35)

'Considering an enzyme, then, of 100 amino acids, there would be no possibility whatever that a single molecule could have arisen by pure chance on earth in five billion years.' (36)

The need for the Ark

Why would God have told Noah to build an ocean-liner-sized Ark just to escape a local Flood? Noah could easily have migrated. Why bother to take birds, when many can fly hundreds of miles in a day? Ross 'explains' (p. 160):

'First, when God pours out judgment, He gives ample warning ahead of time. He sends a spokesperson, a prophet, and gives that prophet a kind of platform from which to be heard. For the antediluvians, Noah was that prophet and the scaffolding around the Ark was his platform.'

Another Ross flight of fancy - what other prophet needed a 'platform', let alone one requiring such a huge expenditure of labor?

'Straw man' and 'guilt by association' arguments

Ross often misrepresents what creationists believe and have clearly stated. For example (p. 148):

'Some global flood proponents who acknowledge the problem of a grossly inadequate water supply propose that Earth's surface was "smoothed," or flattened, by the Flood, thus reducing the water requirement. More specifically, they claim that during the forty days and nights when the floodwaters rose, Earth's mountains radically eroded from their lofty heights of ten fifteen and even twenty thousand feet to just one or two thousand feet, perhaps less.'

This is totally inexcusable, because Ken Ham had responded to a similar Ross misrepresentation (which was even then inexcusable) well before The Genesis Question was published:

'In my 20 years of involvement in creation ministry, I have never known of any material from any Biblical creationists indicating that God "eroded the mountains from a height of 30,000 feet down to sea level during the forty days"! ... Biblical creationists believe that most mountains today did not exist before the Flood, but were raised up (and ocean basins sank) towards the end of the Flood, thus causing the water to run off to where it is today.' (37)

Akin to straw man arguments is guilt by association - Ross complains that a TV documentary about the alleged discovery of the 'Ark' gave the skeptics an easy target (pp. 165-167). The obvious implication is that it's all the fault of global Flood proponents, although the major global Flood organizations have repudiated such claimed discoveries. (38) Many creationists even agree with Ross that the Ark is unlikely to be found because its timber would probably have been used for construction, so that is hardly a unique local-floodist insight.

Ross also copies the ploy of the apostate Ron Numbers, (39) attributing biblical creationism and flood geology to 'the visions of an Adventist prophetess [Ellen White]' via George McCready Price. A number of papers by Dr Terry Mortenson in the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal show that the early 19th century Scriptural Geologists presented such ideas well before Price [see The 19th Century Scriptural Geologists, by Dr Terry Mortenson]. Ken Ham pointed out that he had never even heard of Price at the time he founded CSF/AiG, and that he adopted creationism because of the biblical teaching. (37) Even if Ross were right about Price, he is wrong to think that discrediting Price is enough to refute creationism ã this is a classic case of the genetic fallacy.

With such serious logical fallacies in Ross's book, it is astonishing that it was endorsed by Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland, who is usually very astute at spotting such fallacies. (Did he actually read it?).

Pitching the Ark?

Ross parrots another discredited argument from atheistic skeptics: that it would be impossible to 'pitch' the Ark without millions of years for petroleum products to accumulate (pp. 153-154). This shows that Ross is unwilling to admit to his readers that biblical creationists have already addressed most of his arguments long ago. Dr Tas Walker pointed out 15 years ago that pitch need not be made from petroleum at all - the pitch-making industries in Europe made pitch from pine resin for centuries. (40) The Encyclopædia Britannica says about naval pitch: 'Oleoresin, also called gum or pitch ... is extracted from the pine ...' (41)

Too much coal?

Like bibliosceptics, Ross claims that there is too much coal in the earth's crust to have been formed in the Flood (pp. 151-154). Even worse, as 'evidence' he cites some calculations from a CEN Tech. J. paper, 'Too much coal for a young earth?' (42) However, the whole point of this paper was to solve that problem, by showing evidence that much coal had formed from large floating ecosystems comprising arboreal lycopods, which had been catastrophically buried by water. Ross also omitted the question mark when citing the title, thus further conveying to his readers the diametrically opposite meaning to the paper's intention. Also, John Woodmorappe had shown long ago that vegetation living at the start of the Flood was not the only possible source of carbonaceous material which had eventually transformed into coal. There were about 1656 years between the Creation and Flood, enabling much peat to form, which could have been buried by the Flood and easily transformed into coal since.(43)

Death and the Fall

Since Ross accepts the billions of years, for consistency he must believe that the death, suffering and disease shown by the fossil record occurred well before Adam sinned. Thus Ross denies the biblical teaching that death could not have been part of God's 'very good' creation (Genesis 1:31) because death is 'the last enemy' (1 Corinthians 15:26).

Vegetarian diets

Ross agrees that Genesis 1:29 teaches that humans originally had a vegetarian diet, not 'merely an indication that all food resources derive from plants' (p.71). But he 'explains':

'Vegetarianism perfectly suits the potential longevity of the first humans. Animal tissue contains between ten and ten thousand times the concentration of heavy elements that plant material contains. This difference sounds drastic, but it poses an insignificant health risk for people living only 120 years (the limit God imposed at the time of the Flood). However, the difference is by no means trivial for people living nearly a thousand years.'

Ross provides no documentation. How could he know what dangers would face long-living people without any to test?! This statement is falsified by the lifespans greatly exceeding 120 years long after people were permitted to eat meat. And his statement is hopelessly imprecise: which plants and animals? Some plants take up heavy elements so readily that they are used to clean up waterways. Soy and tea plants are known to take up aluminum readily. Conversely, many animals can excrete such elements. And accumulation is more of a problem in animals higher in the food chain, e.g. sharks with mercury, as well as filter-feeders. This might be a reason for the Mosaic laws against eating carnivores and shellfish.

Also, Ross undercuts one of his own claims. Ross agrees that Genesis 1:29 teaches original vegetarianism for humans, but then surely by his own reasoning, the next verse must teach original vegetarianism in land animals and birds. But Ross denies this without realizing the contradiction, because he believes that carnivore fossils pre-date Adam.

Plant Death

Ross points out that plants must have died before the Fall. Again, he persistently misrepresents what creationists actually teach. 37 We have never taught that plants or individual cells didn't die before the Fall, but only nephesh (soul) creatures. It should be obvious from Genesis 1:29-30 that the Bible is clear that plants do not have life in the sense of nephesh, while animals do.

Biological incompetence

It's perhaps understandable that Ross, whose major qualifications are in astronomy, would not be an expert on biology. But it's astounding that a man who specializes in supposedly scientific apologetics, makes fundamental errors with even high-school level genetics. His apparent ignorance of speciation is covered above, but there are other areas where he does not understand basic genetics.

Human longevity

Ross does accept the biblical long life spans, and rejects any redefinition of the word 'year' (a pity he isn't so careful with the word 'day'). But in ch. 15, Ross interprets the 120 years of Genesis 6:3 as shortening of human life-spans. This is clearly fallacious because it contradicts other Scriptures showing that people lived for hundreds of years well after the Flood. The best understanding is that the 120 years was the time left for mankind before the Flood would destroy it, with only a remnant surviving on the Ark.

Ross's explanation for shortening human life spans is: God supernaturally increased the rate of apoptosis (programmed cell death) to 'protect' us from an increasing-with-age risk of cancer in the aftermath of a radiation burst from the Vela supernova. But it's bizarre to talk about 'protecting' people from cancer should they reach 500, 600, even 900, by making sure they become decrepit and die before 120! What next, 'protecting' people from Alzheimer's disease at 80 by causing fatal heart attacks by 60?

A sensible physical explanation for the drop in longevity is loss of 'longevity genes' by genetic drift because of the population bottleneck at the Flood, and maybe other post-Babel bottlenecks as well, but Ross's book ignores creationist literature and evidence from gene studies. (44)

Cain's wife

Ross correctly believes that Adam's sons and daughters must have intermarried, that such close intermarriage happened in Abraham's time, and that God did not forbid this until Leviticus 18:6-18. But his explanation is garbled (p. 105):

'Genetic defects as a result of intrafamily marriage develop slowly. They would present no risk until after the first several dozen generations.'

Aside from the inconsistency with his deviant view of hundreds of generations between Adam and Abraham, this misunderstands the problem of close intermarriage. It's not the intermarriages per se that cause defects. Rather, there is a greater likelihood of inheriting two recessive defective mutant genes in the same locus, which would thus be expressed. Whereas if the parents were more distantly related, the offspring would likely inherit defects in different loci, each paired by a normal allele that would mask the defect. But since Adam and Eve were created with no defective genes, recessive mutations would take many more than 'several dozen generations' to accumulate to levels where close intermarriage would be dangerous for the offspring.

See also: Where did Cain get his wife?

Other scientific fallacies

Some of Ross's arguments are blatantly circular, in effect: 'Isn't it amazing how modern uniformitarian science backs up what Genesis says?' Hardly surprising, because Ross has re-interpreted Genesis to fit in with uniformitarian science!

Ross strongly overstates the case for fine-tuning of the earth and universe. He claims (p. 32) that Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold lots of water vapor (relative molecular mass (Mr) = 18), 'but not so high as to keep life threatening quantities of ammonia [Mr = 17] and methane [Mr = 16].' Not true - earth's gravity even holds helium (Ar = 4) strongly (incidentally, more helium from ?-decay is released into the atmosphere than escapes into space, and the total amount in the atmosphere is evidence that it is less than two million years old (45). We are protected from methane and ammonia because they are rapidly destroyed by UV light.

There are many other errors, even in Ross's own field of astronomy, documented by the astronomy professor Danny Faulkner.(46)

Conclusion

I haven't covered all of Ross's errors in this review. This would require a whole book, which is planned within a year. But there is enough documentation here of his biblical and scientific errors to show that Christians should not promote his books.

References

1. Ross, H.N., Creation and Time, Navpress, Colorado Springs, p. 56, 1994. Return to text.
2. Van Bebber, M. and Taylor, P.S., Creation and Time: A report on the Progressive Creationist book by Hugh Ross, Eden Productions, Mesa, AZ, 1994. Return to text.
3. Waltke, B.K. and O'Connor, M., An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, IN, p. 122, 1990. Return to text.
4. Exegesis means reading out of the text (i.e. letting the text teach you); eisegesis means reading one's own ideas into the text. Return to text.
5. Harris, R.L., Archer, G.L. and Waltke, B.K., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Moody Press, Chicago, 1980. Return to text.
6. Van Bebber and Taylor, Ref. 2, pp. 86-91. Return to text.
7. Ross, H., Genesis One: A Scientific Perspective, Wiseman Productions, Sierra Mad re, CA, p. 12, 1983. Return to text.
8. Kelly, D.F., Creation and Change: Genesis 1:1-2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms, Mentor (Christian Focus Publications), Ross-shire, UK, ch. 2, 1997. Return to text.
9. Kelly, D.F., lecture at Moore Theological College, Sydney, 7 August 1999. Return to text.
10. D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 2nd Ed., p. 60, 1996. Return to text.
11. Van Bebber and Taylor, Ref. 2, pp. 76-77. Return to text.
12. Harris, et al., Ref. 5, 2:673. Return to text.
13. Grigg, R., How long were the days in Genesis 1? What did God intend us to understand from the words He used? Creation 19(1):23-25, 1996. Return to text.
14. Stambaugh, J., The days of Creation: a semantic approach, CEN Tech. J. 5(1):70-76, 1991. Return to text.
15. Kelly, Ref. 8, p. 111. Return to text.
16. Van Bebber and Taylor, Ref. 2, pp. 69-73. Return to text.
17. Is the seventh day an eternal day?, Creation 21(3):44-45, 1999. Return to text.
18. Kulikovsky, A.S., God's Rest in Hebrews 4:111, CEN Tech. J. 13(2):61-62, 1999. Return to text.
19. For a defense of the Masoretic text vs the altered Septuagint (LXX), see Williams, P., Some remarks preliminary to a biblical chronology, CEN Tech. J. 12(1):98-106, 1998. Return to text.
20. Not just Archbishop Ussher, but also Kepler, Luther and Melanchthon, calculated very similar dates. See Young, R., Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible, 8th Ed., Lutterworth Press, London, p. 210, 1939. Return to text.
21. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities Books I-IV, Harvard Press, Cambridge, MA, 1930, p. 73; Loeb Classical Library No. 242. Return to text.
22. Young, Ref. 20. Josephus calculated the creation date at 5555 BC, because he used mainly the inflated figures of the LXX (5508 or 5586 BC). Return to text.
23. Barr, J., Letter to David C.C. Watson, 1984. Return to text.
24. Sarfati, J.D., Cainan of Luke 3:36, CEN Tech. J. 12(1):39-40, 1998; see also Cainan: How do you explain the difference between Luke 3:36 and Gen. 11:12? Return to text.
25. Josephus, Ref. 21. Return to text.
26. Pierce, L., Letter to the editor, CEN Tech. J. 13(2):76, 1999. Return to text.
27. 'China', Encyclopædia Britannica, 3:230, 15th Ed. 1992. Return to text.
28. Kruger, M., Genesis 6-9: Does 'all' always mean all? CEN Tech. J. 10(2):214-218, 1996. Return to text.
29. Woodmorap pe, J., Noah s Ark: a Feasibility Study, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, 1996. Return to text.
30. Marsh, F.L., Variation and Fixity in Nature, Pacific Press, Mountain View, CA, 1976. Return to text.
31. Wieland, C., Speciation Conference brings good news for creationists, CEN Tech. J., 11(2):135-136, 1997. Return to text.
32. Cohen, P., The great divide, New Scientist 160(2164):16, 1998. Return to text.
33. Jerlström, P., Genomic imprinting, CEN Tech. J. 13(2):6-8, 1999. Return to text.
34. ReMine, W.J., The Biotic Message, St. Paul Science, St. Paul, MN, 1993; see online review. Return to text.
35. Gish, D.T., Evolution: The Fossils Say No! Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego, CA, 2nd ed., p. 43, 1973. This book has been superseded by Evolution: The fossils STILL say NO!, Institute for Creation Research, El Cahon, CA, USA, 1995. Return to text.
36. Gish, D.T., The origin of life: theories on the origin of biological order, ICR Impact 37:iii, 1976. Return to text.
37. Ham, K., Demolishing 'straw men', Creation 19(4):13-15, 1997. Return to text.
38. Snelling, A.A., Amazing 'Ark' exposé, Creation 14(4):26-38, 1992. Return to text.
39. See the review of Numbers' historically unreliable (perhaps due to his anti-creationist bias) book The Creationists by Andrews, E., Origins 8(20):21-23, 1995. Return to text.
40. Walker, T., The pitch for Noah's Ark, Creation 7(1):20, 1984. Return to text.
41. 'Naval stores', Encyclopædia Britannica, 8:564-565, 15th Ed. 1992; emphasis added. Return to text.
42. Schönknecht, G. and Scherer, S., Too much coal for a young earth? CEN Tech. J. 11(3)278-282, 1997. Return to text.
43. Woodmorap pe, J., The antediluvian biosphere and its capability of supplying the entire fossil record, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Creationism, 2:205-218,1986. Return to text.
44. Wieland, C., Living for 900 years, Creation 20(4):10-13, 1998. Return to text.
45. Vardiman, L., The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux through the Atmosphere, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, 1990; see also Blowing old-earth belief away:Helium gives evidence that the earth is young. Return to text.
46. Faulkner, D.R., The dubious apologetics of Hugh Ross, CEN Tech. J. 13(2):52-60, 1999. Return to text.

Dr. Hugh Ross: Apologist or Heretic?

Why Devote An Entire Page To A Man Revered Inside The Church?

Why would I, as a Christian, devote an entire web page to critiquing the teachings and statements of Dr. Hugh Ross? After all, we have other "Christian" ministers, teaching utter nonsense and outright heresy and I haven't devoted a page to them. The RTB Statement of Faith is orthodox although he does appear to consider nature and Scripture as equal revelations which is somewhat troubling. He also claims to agree with the statement on inerrancy by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy although his teachings about creation are incompatible with such a pronouncement. It is not his day-age theory or anything associated with the age of the Earth debate that has troubled me. So, why target the teachings of Dr. Ross and what exactly am I upset with?

Unlike the vast majority of people that are spewing nonsense and heresy in the name of Christianity Dr. Ross appears to be getting a free ride. He seems impervious to the normal criticisms that would be leveled at anyone making the outlandish statements that he has made concerning everything from the nature of God to evidence for the Bible being God's word. Even Dr. William Lane Craig's recent Philosophia Christi article which clearly documents that Ross is teaching doctrines contrary to the ESSENTIALS of the faith calls him "EVANGELICALISM'S most important scientific apologist" (emphasis added). In Norman Geisler's *Bakers Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics* he lists Ross along side Augustine and Aquinas as great apologists. If he is teaching heresy (which I believe I have soundly documented) then how can any Christian still refer to him as an apologist for the faith? For a variety of possible reasons Dr. Ross has become widely recognized within the church with little critical review of his positions while making increasingly absurd, false, heterodox and even heretical claims. Since these comments seem to be going unchallenged and he continues to be embraced by most of Christianity as a spokesman for the faith I feel that someone needed to stand firm for honesty and sound doctrine.

The best outcome would be for his repentance from these positions and statements and to use his popularity to promote truth and orthodoxy. It is my reverent hope that such a repentance will take place but in the event that one is not forthcoming then the body of believers needs to be forewarned about his theology, science and misleading statements concerning a vast number of subjects.

A number of years ago I first noticed some very disturbing statements by Dr. Ross, but it seemed that I was the only person who was noticing. These statements appeared to include factual misrepresentations of events, scientific blunders, dangerous heterodox ideas and even outright heresy.

As I was trying to come to an understanding with Dr. Ross, I found a number of other people who had gone before me. None of these people were raising all of the issues that I was, but they were raising some of these as well as additional issues. As I followed the prescription of Scripture in resolving these matters, I first approached Ross directly (through RTB). Unable to resolve these matters, I approached some of the leaders within the church to approach Ross with me. I was generally dismissed by most of them, and while some people considered my documentation of heretical statements interesting, almost no person of notoriety within the church would stand with me and confront Ross. In frustration over the matter, I published an open letter to Ross (after sending him a copy of that letter, without response) on my web page.

Perhaps completely independent of my protestations, some very notable Christian leaders have started taking notice of both the heretical doctrines and absurd scientific pronouncements that Ross has been making for years. I am hoping that by presenting this information to the public, we can put enough pressure on Ross to consider the counsel of his peers and retract many of his outlandish statements.

Please keep in mind, as you read the links below, that some of the material is dated. In the letter from Dr. Humphreys to CRS he mentions that he and Dr. Ross had not communicated in years.There was subsequently a number of letters exchanged with the first Ross letter being sent in December 1997, AFTER I pointed out to the RTB staff that their 4th Qtr 1997 newsletter was claiming that Ross had had an ongoing discussion with Dr. Humphreys. The newsletter also claimed that Ross had convened a panel of scientists who confronted Dr. Humphreys. This also was false. There have been additional exchanges since 1997 notably the CENTJ articles in the Summer of 1998. While Ross claims those articles (which he did not write) utterly destroyed the model of Dr. Humphreys, those Physicists whom I know, that are sufficiently competent in Relativity Theory to evaluate the dialog, have affirmed that Dr. Humphreys acquitted himself and his model well.

Dr. Ross related pages.

An easy to understand chart: Some people have complained that they couldn't see the problem areas with Ross so I created this chart.

JUST ADDED; A letter by a leading California Educator: Theophilus is the nom de plum for the author of this letter.

My open letter to Dr. Ross: I only published this letter after 2 years of trying to resolve these matters privately.

CENT 13(2):52-60,1999: Other Christian scientists are finally noticing the theological and scientific gaffs by Dr. Hugh Ross. See this article by Dr. Danny Faulkner.

Review of"The Genesis Question": Glen Morton has reviewed this book. While Glen and I would disagree on the age of the Earth some of his criticisms of Ross are exactly the same ones that I found.

Another Open Letter to Ross: An Open letter from Physicist Lambert Dolphin to Dr. Ross.

Speaking Truth In Love: An article by Dr. Bolton Davidheiser that discusses some of Ross' scientific gaffs.

A Review of "Creation And Time": A book that alleges the same type of dishonesty in scholarship that I believe I have seen in Ross's public statements about Dr. D. Russell Humphreys.

Philosophia Christi articles about Ross' theology: As of the creation of this page the on-line journal archives have not posted the 1998 articles about Ross' theology but as they reach that date this link should take you to the article. This journal includes articles by Dr. William Lane Craig, Dr. J.P. Moreland and Thomas Oden.

Philosophia Christi: Until the Philosophia Christi site archives are brought up to date this is an alternative site where all the related articles may be found.

Bolton Davidheiser Ph.D. : A statement concerning the ministry of Dr. Hugh Ross by Bolton Davidheiser Ph.D., Zoology.

Masami Usami: A reply by Masami Usami to the presentation of the creation arguments by Hugh Ross.

Response From Dr. Humphreys: Dr. D. Russell Humphreys reply to my post describing Ross' statements on the Warren Duffy program on KKLA.

Humphreys' challenge to Ross: An early challenge from Humphreys to Ross to debate the facts.

Dear CRSnet people:

Thanks for sending me a copy of Bill Donahue's 5/21/97 post about Hugh Ross's radio program. As reported in Bill's posting, it appears that Ross has committed a number of "Rossisms," which I define as "confident overstatements which are clearly false". Below I will cite and correct four of the Rossisms reported in the posting:

1. "[Ross claims] the book is full of mathematical errors". False. As evidence I point out that Ross has yet to make such claims in a peer-reviewed scientific journal where I can answer him. Furthermore, since 1994 Ross has backed out of several radio debates when he found out I was to be his opponent [1-4]. These are not the actions of a man who is confident he has a real case.
2. "[Ross claims] Russ had acknowledged the existence of these math errors." No, I haven't acknowledged any math errors. I did acknowledge one minor verbal error --- a phrase in my book --- which is irrelevant to my main argument.
3. "[Ross claims] that when these errors are corrected they prove an old universe rather than a young universe." Wrong again. Shortly after publication of my book, Ross made this claim in a newsletter to his supporters [5]. On March 7, 1995 I faxed him a letter detailing the "off-the-wall" nature of his criticisms and correcting them. He did not reply to me. On March 26, I sent him a hard copy. He still did not reply. Finally in May I published my letter openly [1]. He still did not reply to me personally, but in August he finally responded publicly [2]. In that letter to an editor, Ross did not defend his criticisms specifically, but rather said that he had consigned that job to several of his friends. Thus far, no criticisms from those friends have appeared in any peer-reviewed scientific journal, creationist or otherwise. (I'm hoping that will change.) Instead, Ross's friends are relying on back-door circulation of letters and unreviewed pamphlets. They are hiding from their supporters the existence of a public exchange of articles between them and me in a non-peer-reviewed layman's newsletter [6,7], particularly concealing the fact that I replied. As far as I know, Ross himself has not personally committed to print any technical criticisms about my book since August 1995.
4. "[Ross] elaborated further that he had discussed these errors with Russ..." That is not true at all. Ross has not communicated with me since his last letter to me on April 15, 1993. In that letter he finally answered my persistent requests that he be an official ICC reviewer for my forthcoming paper on cosmology. He refused to commit himself to that job. Since 1993 he hasn't corresponded or spoken with me at all. So how can he claim to have "discussed" the alleged errors in my 1994 book with me? If that is what Ross actually said, it is hard for me to imagine it as anything but a direct, conscious lie.

I'm so used to half-truths (and worse) from Ross that they don't surprise me any more. What surprises me is that there are people on CRSnet who still unthinkingly tend to accept Ross's statements as true. Surely everybody here should be able to see through him by now! [D. Ihms note: we tend to believe someone if they claim to be a Christian. When that person proves to be unreliable, untruthful, hurtful, a slanderer, ... then we know better.]

Bill seems worried that the enemies of young-earth creation science may eventually find something wrong with my paper. Some of my other creationist friends have the same worry. But what would be so bad about that? Do I, like the Bible, have to be inspired and inerrant? No. I'm proposing a scientific theory, not writing new scripture! If any of you are placing your faith in any supposed inerrancy of mine, you're in for a rude shock. I make mistakes!

Instead, place your faith in an inerrant Word of God. Read it straightforwardly. Does it tell you that the world is young? That is the message I get, loud and and clear. Well then, even if my theory should turn out to be wrong, we know that a correct young-world cosmology exists. Let's seek it vigorously ---- and accept whatever mistakes we may make along the way with cheerfulness and courage!

Cordially in Christ our creator,
Russ Humphreys

References

[1] D. R. Humphreys,*Bible-Science News* (BSN), Vol. 33:4 (May 1995), pp. 21-22, "An Open Letter to Hugh Ross," see Background Note. To get back issues and reprints of BSN, call the Bible-Science Association in Zimmerman, MN toll-free at 1 (800) 422-4253.

[2] H. Ross, BSN, Vol. 33:6 (August 1995). p. 6, "More from Ross and Humphreys".

[3] D. R. Humphreys, BSN, Vol. 33:6 (August 1995), pp. 6-7, "There you go again, Dr. Ross!"

[4] D. R. Humphreys, BSN, Vol. 33:6 (August 1995), p. 7, copy of August 13, 1994 letter to Hugh Ross.

[5] H. Ross, *Facts and Faith*, Vol. 9:1 (First Quarter 1995), pp. 12-13, Progress Toward the Resolution of the Creation-Date Controversy".

[6] S. R. Conner and D. N. Page, BSN, Vol. 33:7 (September 1995), pp. 7-16, "Light-Travel Time in *Starlight and Time*".

[7] D. R. Humphreys, BSN, Vol. 33:7 (September 1995), pp. 7-19, "How We Can See a Young Universe".

Chart of Dr. Hugh Ross' Theology
Orthodoxy Holds
Ross Teaches
Source Material For Ross
God is infinite & spirit That God is a finite temporal being with a body, soul and spirit. "Adam and Eve ... were created in the image of God - body, soul and spirit. God is body, soul and spirit." (Ross, "Noah and the Ark," TBN video broadcast Feb. 5, 1992 [RTB video no. V9206], (emphasis added)

"Only Adam and Eve were created in the image of God - body, soul, and spirit." Ross, "Kids Ask," Facts & Faith, vol. 5, no. 2 (Summer 1991) p. 13b-c (emphasis added)

"My choice of the word timeful to describe God's time-related capacities deliberately contradicts a notion that much of the church has held and taught for many centuries, the notion of a 'timeless' eternity as the realm where God lives and where we will live someday also" (Beyond the Cosmos p. 65)

Singling out Augustine and Aquinas as proponents of this doctrine, Ross exclaims, "... rare indeed is the student or professor who dares to challenge the doctrine of God's dwelling in a timeless eternity" (ibid. p. 66), as Ross evidently means to do. In his view, God "must possess at least one more time dimension (or some attribute, capacity, super-dimension or supra-dimension that encompasses all the properties of time.... The Creator's capacities include at least two, perhaps more, time dimensions" (ibid. pp. 23-24)

"Ross thinks that by positing God's existence in higher spatial dimensions, he can make sense of God's invisibility and proximity.5 He claims that "God is hidden from us in the sense that we cannot make contact with Him through our five senses" (ibid. p. 72). But this is a clearly deficient conception of God's spirituality and incorporeality, for it leaves open the view that God is a spatial object which is simply undetectable by our senses'. (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998)
God is Triune Has redefined the word "Trinity" to include a modalistic version of the Godhead that is absurd (his words) unless understood in light of his extra-dimensional theories of God and heaven "But as an illustration of the Trinity, Ross' scenario of a three-dimensional hand intersecting a two-dimensional surface seems no more adequate than the well-known, deficient illustrations he criticizes. When flatlanders see the finger of the hand intersecting their plane in different ways. "They might never discern that the six-plus manifestations were all governed by one entity and one source of operation" (Beyond the Cosmos p. 93). But this amounts to an illustration of modalism, not the Trinity. Later Ross imagines the flatlanders seeing the several intersections of the hand's fingers with their plane, commenting, "The twoness, threeness, or moreness of our hand (or one aspect of that plurality) they could imagine, but not the oneness" (ibid. p. 95). But the fingers are merely parts of the one hand, and Ross himself earlier quoted from the Augsburg Confession that "... the term 'person' is used, as the ancient Fathers employed it in this connection, to signify not a part or a quality in another but that which subsists of itself." The hand-flatland illustration thus only succeeds in illustrating modalism or one thing's having three parts. It certainly does not make the Trinity more intelligible." (emphasis added) (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998)
Jesus is distinct from the Father That Jesus is identical to the Father "Jesus claims to be ... identical to the Father, also to the Holy Spirit, and the Father to the Holy Spirit"; other claims "simultaneously true" are that each member of the Trinity is "completely distinct and independent" ... "at the same time they're identical to one another". (H. Ross, "Man's Will & God's Will," Jan. 23, 1991, tape 1, side 1)
That the Trinity does not violate the law of non-contradiction because God is not singular and plural in the same sense at the same time. That the Trinity is a provable contradiction "The Trinity is One, Two and Three Persons all at the same time, according to the Bible" Ross, Creator & Cosmos (1993) p. 147, cf. p. 71 (emphasis added),

"You find verses that make the claim for the Duality, Two and only Two, and Three and only Three; all simultaneously true" (Ross, "God is One, Two, and Three," Jan. 16, 1991, tape 2, side 1) (emphasis added)

"God is One and only One Person. God is Two, not One, not Three Persons. God is Three Persons, not Two Persons, not One Person. And all of those are true simultaneously.... He's One, Two, and Three at the same time"); Ross lecture, "Job & Gospel According to Creation," Sept. 1986 (RTB audio tape no. A8707) side 2 (emphasis added)

"Trinity is a "provable contradiction ... in four dimensions", "The Trinity is a mathematical absurdity in the context of just the four dimensions". (Ross, Creator & Cosmos p. 147 &148) (emphasis added)

"And I would have to agree with the Muslim apologist who says that the Trinity is mathematical nonsense, that it's mathematically absurd. He's absolutely correct if God is confined to the same dimensions that we are. It's utterly impossible for the doctrine of the Trinity we see described in Scripture to be possible, to be true, if there are only 4 dimensions for us and for God. Can't happen. How could a being be simultaneously singular and plural? It's much more complex than that as you'll see. But it's utterly impossible in the 4 dimensions." (Ross, "God is One, Two, and Three, tape 1, side 1), (emphasis added).

"The charge that 'Trinitarians' accept a mathematical absurdity would seem appropriate ... if the biblical God were confined to the same dimensional realm as humans" (Beyond the Cosmos p. 82).
Evil exists because men choose not to obey God. Evil is the absence of or resistance to good That God is the author of evil. "God's in control of Satan. As such, it's proper to say that God is the author of all evil. Yes, He created Satan for His own purpose. God controls everything and predetermines everything that Satan will do." "(Ross, "The Question of Evil and Suffering," Nov. 30, 1989, RTB audio tape set no. A8915, tape 1) (emphasis added)
That man suffers under the curse as a result of his sin. That the curse is a good thing and NOT the result of sin. "the Curse is "good," a "gift of God," and "It's not, you know, the wrath of God being poured out upon us....The same thing's true with physical death"; (Ross, "Question of Evil & Suffering," Nov. 30, 1989) (emphasis added)

Ross, "Evidence of Design," Oct.26, 1989, tape 2

"Physical death is a good thing for the human race. That's the first gift that God gave to the human race after we died spiritually.... just because physical death takes place doesn't mean it's bad. It's not bad from God's perspective; it is good; it is a gift." (Ross, "Question of Evil & Suffering," Nov. 30, 1989) (emphasis added)

"Death is a gift for us from God. We need to see it as a gift, not as something bad." (Ross, "Science vs. Genesis," Jan. 23, 1988 (CC-SA) tape 2, side 2. See also Ross, Fingerprint (1989) pp. 154-155, 174 (1991 rev.) pp. 153-155, 174.

"The Bible says the physical death we experience is a gift, not a punishment.... Now, God's using death as a tool for redemption.... If we try to gain God's perspective on the suffering and death, just like eternal torment in hell, that doesn't seem to jibe with God's love, yet the Bible declares that's an expression of God's love. That should challenge us, as we study the Bible, to dig deeper and see how love is revealed through physical death...." Ross interview, " (Ross, "The Glory of God in Creation," Part 2, by Dr. James Dobson on "Focus on the Family" (FOF) radio broadcast, Apr. 18, 1991 (RTB audio tape no. A9157; FOF tape no. BR-968B), (emphasis added)
That one of the immutable attributes of God is Omniscience. That God is not Omniscient in the traditional sense but rather is the equivalent of a telephone operator existing in many dimensions with and infinite number of connections available to those of us in finite time. In one place Dr. Ross suggests that the postulation of a hypertime helps to answer a third-grader's question about how God can listen to a billion prayers at once. Not only does Ross seem to get his answer backwards (he, in effect, turns our time into a hypertime above time instead of saying God has infinitely many hyper-instants at which to listen to each prayer in succession), but his answer dreadfully depreciates divine omniscience. Rather than cast God anthropomorphically as a cognitively limited, hyper-dimensional telephone operator, Ross should have explained to his third-grade friend that just as a super-computer can do millions of operations at once, God is infinitely more intelligent than a super-computer and so His lines can never get jammed! (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998)
That the incarnate Christ was at all times fully God and fully man. That Christ in the incarnation was not two natures in one being but rather stopped being fully God at the incarnation. "Ross also believes that God's extra-dimensionality serves to illumine Christology. Unfortunately, although Ross clearly affirms that Jesus is both God and man, it may be justifiably doubted whether he affirms the Chalcedonian formula of two natures united in one person. For example, he does not describe the incarnation as the second person of the Trinity's taking on a human nature in addition to his divine nature, but as God's literally turning Himself into a human being:

... the second person of the Triune God, the Creator of all angels and of the entire universe, actually became a man.... God supernaturally entered the womb of a virgin (Mary). How He interacted with or modified Mary's egg is not made clear in Scripture, but He became a flesh and blood embryo (Beyond the Cosmos p. 104).

This remarkable statement suggests that Ross stands in the Alexandrian tradition of one-nature Christology. Such a conception seems to require God's relinquishing some of His divine attributes in becoming a man, and this is just what Ross affirms:

In coming to Earth as an embryo in the virgin's womb, Christ 'emptied' Himself, leaving behind the extra-dimensional realm and capacities He shared with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. When He had completed the work He set out to do, the work of redemption, He returned to the place and the powers He had left behind (Beyond the Cosmos p. 49).

This passage constitutes an endorsement of kenotic theology, which interprets Christ's self-emptying as the divestiture of certain divine attributes. Now this sort of non-Chalcedonian, kenotic Christology seems to me a very serious aberration" (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998) (emphasis added)
That God can not die. That the portion of God's nature that was retained by Christ actually died on the cross "Some skeptics and atheists have argued that if Jesus were God, He could not have died; and if He died, He could not have been God. They recognize, of course, the contradiction in saying that Jesus is both really dead and really alive.... The simultaneity of Jesus' death and immortality would only be a contradiction, however, if the time, place, and context of His death were identical to the time, place and dimensional context of His being alive.... Because of Christ's identity as God and His access to all the dimensions or superdimensions God encompasses, He could experience suffering and death in all the human-occupied dimensions and then transition into any of His other dimensions or realms once the atonement price had been paid" (Ross, Beyond the Cosmos pp. 108-109)

"Here Ross does seem to affirm that God was both dead and alive, but that that contradiction is avoided by extra-dimensionality. But this escape does not seem to work. For Ross had clearly affirmed that in the incarnation God the Son had left the extra-dimensional realms and capacities he shared with the Father and the Spirit. Thus, if he died in our human realm, God died. How he could then transition back to extra-dimensional realms once he had died seems inexplicable. In any case the logical problem here is not just God's being both dead and alive, but God's being dead, period. By definition, God cannot perish. But without a two natures Christology, we are forced to affirm the absurdity that God died". (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998) (emphasis added)
That Christ died once and his atonement for our sins was completed on the cross. That Christ is eternally separated from God dying and infinite number of deaths on an infinite number of time lines for an infinite amount of time. "Extra-dimensionality leads Ross into even more bizarre speculations about the atonement in answer to the question of how one man's death could pay for all people's sins. Instead answering that question in terms of the dignity of Christ's person, he hypothesizes that perpendicular to our time dimension is another dimension composed of billions of separate time lines on each of which Christ suffers death and subsequent isolation from God for infinite time (Beyond the Cosmos p. 112). I find this speculation profoundly unacceptable. It requires, in effect, billions of Christs, thus destroying Christ's personal identity. For it is a distinct person who dies on the cross in each of these time lines. Moreover, each of these "Christs" suffers separation from God endlessly with no hope of resurrection and victory at the end. That Christ rises in our temporal dimension is the exception to the rule; the other Christs remain separated from God forever, which makes a mockery of Jesus' triumph over death.": (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998) (emphasis added)
Jesus rose in the body he was sown in made incorruptible. Jesus physical appearances are explained by the illusion created by manipulating the physical dimensions. "Ross also makes a curious suggestion concerning Jesus' resurrection appearances: in disappearing from view, Jesus "rotated" each of his three spatial dimensions into a fourth, fifth, and sixth spatial dimension respectively (Beyond The Cosmos pp. 46-47). Jesus' resurrection body thus literally came apart and became three one-dimensional lines--not a very robust conception of a body!" (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998) (emphasis added)
We are saved by faith alone through grace alone. Betrays the Reformation doctrine of sola fide, in favor of a non-Christian gradually increasing in "Christlikeness" until he irrevocably crosses the "salvation threshold "With respect to doctrine of salvation, Ross' diagrams on pp. 161, 162 seem to betray the Reformation doctrine of sola fide, for they show a non-Christian gradually increasing in "Christlikeness" until he irrevocably crosses the "salvation threshold." Even if we interpret this increase to be the result of God's prevenient work, it is still surely false that salvation is achieved by a non-Christian's growing more Christlike until he crosses the line of no return and is saved." (Craig on Ross in Philosophia Christi Volume 21:1 - Summer, 1998) (emphasis added)

Go To The Hugh Ross Index
Go To Main Index

Important Comments on the Ministry of Hugh Ross Ph. D.
by Robert A. Herrmann Ph. D.
2 April 1999, Revised 9 JULY 2000

After conducting personal research on the subject, I have the following conclusions relative to the scientific background and teachings of Hugh Norman Ross, Ph. D, the President of Reasons to Believe, Inc. I do not intend, in any manner, to present any personal attack upon Hugh Ross as an individual. My only concern is with the doctrine presented by this organization. All of the relative material used in this research is published and publicly available. I will state my conclusion first and then give some justifications. [It is very important, however, that if you consider these findings significant that you continue your own research and actually determine the correctness of my conclusions for yourself.]

Although there should be no need whatsoever to remind any reader of this page who created the universe in which we dwell, it does serve a very definite need in what follows.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . All things are made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . . And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. . . (John 1: 1 - 14) Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are on heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, . . . . (Colossians 1: 15 - 16)

Also of considerable significance is the statement found in Hebrews 1:3 where we are told that continually this same "image of the invisible God" is

sustaining [or upholding] the universe by His powerful command.

Indeed, it is Jesus Himself who gave warnings by partially describing "false prophets" as they will appear throughout the times of the New Testament church.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. (Matthew 7:15)

It is not difficult to find other Scriptural characteristics for false prophets or false apostles. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul describes the condition of society that will mark the "last days." The description is exactly that of our present times. Described in 2 Timothy 3:5 are those

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Paul also gives direct characteristics that will aid in identifying false prophets or false apostles.

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. . . . For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. (II Corinthians 11: 3-14)

The teachings of this ministry exemplify, as described above, the teachings of false prophets or false apostles.

[1] Relative to scientific matters, when compared with other scientists who have contributed significantly to the relation between science and theology (for example see temp) , the secular scientific achievements of Hugh Ross can only be considered as minimal in character. With only 5 published articles in established secular scientific journals, the last being in December 1977, it is clear, to me, that Ross and his associates could not possibly be aware of the somewhat complex modern (1985 - present) scientific techniques used to analyze such speculative theories as the standard model for the evolution of our universe or to analyze specific theological doctrine. Because of these facts, one should investigate very, very carefully any scientific pronouncements or claims made by members of his organization, and definitely not accept them based simply upon a claimed, but not substantiated, scientific authority. [Note: The author of this commentary is a member of a group of scientists who present models that uphold recent creation. This "Reason to Believe" ministry tends to denigrate the scientific background and achievements of members of this group. If you have not done so, you may wish to compare this author's "1. Professional Biography" and "10. Published Papers" with those of Hugh Ross. This will help you to determine the truthfulness of any such assertion.]

[2] Within the writings of this organization, statements have been made that are not historical fact, and in the tried and true fashion of false apostles, this ministry mixes fact with fiction. This is especially so when there are published or recorded claims that certain statements or concepts appear in the Bible when in reality the Bible is either silent on the matter or the Bible states otherwise. (Relative to this, please see Dr. Hugh Ross Exposed.)

[3] Re-interpretations of many literal Bible statements and non-biblical additions to the attributes of God as practiced by this ministry are the exact methods that have been and will continue to be used by all false prophets and false apostles. Proudly, they all claim or will claim that they have a form of special interpretation or revelation. For example, as used in Genesis 1, there is the significant word hayah. This word has a wide semantic range. In the Scriptures, its meaning for thousands of years as been "to exist" "to come into being," "cause to be made or done." But we are told by this ministry that in Genesis 1 there is one place and just one place where its meaning has been universally misunderstood. The special revelation accorded this ministry, and no one else, is that in Genesis 1:14 the word must be translated as "to appear," meaning to simply become visible to an observer. "Let there appear lights in the firmament" rather than the accepted and consistent creation command "Let there be (come into existence) lights in the firmament."

Relative to the Bible and the New Testament church, a certain basic method has been used since 130 AD. The method used is as follows: Literal Bible terms are re-interpreted in terms of the language and comprehension of a particular social or political unit or the like. The same language is used for the many claimed additions or alterations to the Divine attributes. Then certain claims are made that with respect to the notions associated with a such a group of individuals the Bible confirms basic hypotheses accepted or, at the least, comprehended by the group. For an example of a clever and extreme case, please consider Alice Bailey's book, "From Bethlehem to Calvary, The Initiations of Jesus" (Lucis, New York, 1937). She claims to use the Scriptures and to establish that Jesus actually went through the occult initiation processes and became one of the adapts called "Masters."

[4] "General revelation" - the claim that by observing nature one can determine that a "supernatural" god or even gods with certain attributes exist has been utilized for many thousands of years. Such displayed attributes most be limited in character, however. Of course, one is almost always lead to these attributes by the claims of others rather than direct personal investigation. Humankind worships a god or gods with the hypothesized attributes. Clearly, if no god actually exists with such attributes, then such worship would be akin to idolatry from a Christian perspective. As shown in [6], this ministry's specific statement that general revelation will lead to salvation is untrue and exceptionally dangerous. Only through the very special and literal revelations stated in the Scriptures can an individual who claims to be a Christian attain salvation.

[5] This ministry uses these linguistic "Bible altering" techniques and presents arguments in terms of the prevailing "science or science fiction" orientation of many members of our present "Star Trek" generation. This ministry makes absurd statements that non-verifiable speculative science is fact. This ministry actually rejects almost all of the creationary statements made throughout the Bible and, yet, claims that they are establishing the Bible creation scenario. They have added enormously to the Bible via pure speculation, such as claiming that "God has increased the complexity of life on earth by successive creations over billions of years while miraculously changing the earth to accommodate new life" (emphasis added), and claim that such Biblical speculation is fact. [Later, I'll direct you to scientific models for Biblical creation that require no such level of speculation and satisfy the Bible's statements exactly.] It is enough to say that on this very Web site is a mathematical model that shows that such speculative theories as used by this ministry have no actual scientific merit since there are infinitely many of them that can be used to verify all possible observations. Relative to Scriptural interpretations, the claim that others may have had, but probably did not have, such "revelations" does not alter the statement that special extra-biblical knowledge is required for such re-interpretations, knowledge that does not illuminate doctrine, but rather completely alters the original doctrine presented to the church during the first century. It is not the purpose of this comment to discuss such a reliance upon speculation since from my experience such a re-interpretation in terms of modern scientific terms is most likely to be but a popular overt procedure that is actually hiding a very dangerous covert response - a response that may not be fully appreciated by the "Reasons to Believe" ministry.

[6] This ministry's stated views on physical death, sin and especially salvation are extremely dangerous and demonstrate clearly that this doctrine is that of false prophets or false apostles as described above. To state that "The plan of salvation as stated in the Bible can be seen through observation of the universe about us," that Nature is like the "sixty-seventh book" of the Bible, and to claim that human beings fallible observation of natural-system behavior should be "on equal footing" with the written infallible revelations of the Scriptures is blasphemy since these statements are totally false.

The Hebrew verb "to die" (muwth) appears approximately 800 times in the Old Testament. Of major significance is its appearance in Genesis 2:17, and 3:3, 4. This ministry claims that for these three occurrences only "spiritual" death is the correct interpretation. However, in all other cases within the Old Testament the term refers directly to "physical" death. There can be no doubt that this claimed private interpretation is incorrect and that physical death must also be indicated by these three verses. Further, "spiritual death" is indicated not by the use of such a term but rather by the "covering" concept. This egregious error invalidates this ministry's doctrine.

The "death and resurrection" aspect of the Gospel message as preached by Paul is explicitly stated in 1 Corinthians 15. Relative to death, this chapter is totally concerned with physical death. Consequently, Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 15:21-23, at the least, refers to physical death. Paul states even more explicitly the relationship between this type of "physical death" and "sin." He writes, "On this account, as by one man sin into the world entered, and by sin death, and thus to all men death passed. . . " Romans 5:12 (Thomas Newberry, The Englishman's Greek New Testament) This ministry denies the clear logical implication that "physical death" came to the "world" through Adam's sin and from this general physical death, specific physical death was passed onto humankind. This statement should be easily understood without any further explanation or commentary, this meaning of the word "death" most certainly includes physical death. [Note: I do not deny the fact that the word Paul uses here and translated "world," the Greek word kosmos, has various contextual meanings such as system, earth, humankind, etc. There are other proof-texts such as Romans 8: 20-23, among others, that indicate Paul's understanding that the term, in this case, should, at the least, include the entire earth.]

This ministry's stated doctrine most definitely will lead to a strong deception and will, indeed, "deceive" even some who consider themselves members of the "elect," the chosen. This organization's statements relative to the doctrine of salvation through observing nature (i.e. naturalism) strongly undermines, especially for a "scientifically" oriented society, the fact that, with the coming of the New Testament church, salvation is through belief in and the acceptance of the Gospel message, including all of its supernatural aspects, and a personal Savior, Jesus Christ. Such salvation can only be obtained through Jesus Christ and, once an individual is exposed to these Biblical truths, only through the special procedures explicitly stated only within the Bible. These special Biblical revelations cannot come from general revelation.

This ministry also presents some very unusual statements that do not directly occur in the Scriptures and yet they claim that they do. These statements deal with the great philosophical problems of "good" and "evil." Rather than acknowledging the clear Scriptural teachings that "good" and "evil" are spirits, this ministry presents philosophical ramblings such as "physical death is good" and even a "gift from God," an "expression of His love." Further, this ministry may claim that physical death is "not a punishment" nor even a "wrath of God." As direct statements, these quotations appear to be in direct opposition to the salvation message and Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians 15:26 and 54 - 56. Note in particular 56: "The sting of death is sin" (KJ) "For sin - the sting the causes death - will all be gone." (LB) It is well-known that many believe that the Hebrew mind-set was that God was the creator not just of the material universe but also responsible for everything including good and evil. That evil was " . . . looked on as God's punishment which normally corresponds exactly to the preceding sin." But the facts appear to be that one can ask many questions about the Old Testament concept of evil, which the Old Testament does not answer in any clear and direct manner. The answers are more directly obtained from the New Testament. If God allows obtuse dialectic arguments as a bases for comprehending His basic concepts, then there are arguments that seem to circumvent the apparent prohibitions presented within Paul's statement or, indeed, as such statements might be understood relative to the more definitive New Testament meanings for these concepts. The logic needed is not scientific logic and does undermine the scientific logic used for a scientific creation scenario. Such statements would, in my opinion, most certainly not help the "heathen" to accept the clear and straightforward New Testament salvation format. The concepts of "good" and "evil" as presented by this ministry will actual aid to defeat the salvation message and are clearly designed to confuse and beguile. From my 42 years attuned to the mind of evil, the absolute fact is that an individual must first realize the need for a Savior, a need to be attuned to the "mind of Christ," to a Spirit, rather than to be attuned to another spirit, the mind of evil.

The most dangerous aspect of this theology is that removing, from the Bible, the basic literal meanings for many significant terms or claiming, without any direct Biblical justification, that pure speculative statements are Biblically inspired will allow individuals exposed to these linguistic methods to also remove, "cross out," alter or add to the literal and required Biblically stated "salvation format." As it has been established above and by other investigators, this theology is, indeed, "another gospel" implied nowhere within Paul's writings and, indeed, nowhere within the Scriptures. Dr. Bolton Davidheiser at the above Internet site "Dr. Hugh Ross Exposed" comments as follows:

But freedom from idolatry through recognizing that there must be a God of creation is a different matter from understanding salvation by grace and receiving Christ as personal Savior through accepting His atonement for sin. . . . We know that there are heathen that have not heard the gospel of salvation through the atonement made by the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross at Calvary and we know that there are those in our country at this present time who have not heard, even among many who go to church regularly. God is the righteous Judge. It is not for us to judge but to minister the gospel wherever we can.

(For a further discussion as to this ministry's attempts at Scriptural re-interpretation, a process that leads to the actual salvation aspect of this ministry, the "Universal God" concept of general revelation, please see the 1994 book, "Creation and Time: A Report on the Book by Hugh Ross," by Van Bebber and Taylor. It is published by Eden Communications and you can find this book listed under their Christian Superstore at this URL.)

This ministry does not uphold the incomprehensible and supernatural Divine power of God's creationary processes and, hence, greatly weakens the salvation message, its supernatural aspects and its strict Biblical format. Many individuals will probably follow this ministry's salvation message. A few will seek proper guidance from the special revelations given only in the Bible as to the proper and literal salvation format. But, many, many more will not follow this guidance although they have been exposed to the correct Scriptural statements. Jesus has described the probable salvation result for this latter group.

Many will say to me in that day Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7:22)

[7] Such doctrinal concerns appear not to be relative to the salvation of the so-called heathen who have not or will not receive the correct salvation message. For, if this ministry's concerns were of this nature, then it would follow the absolute Scriptural requirements of the "Great Commission" as they are explicitly described by the God this ministry claims to follow. I repeat, that it is clear to me that this doctrinal approach, this dangerous theology, as it is being presented to many "science or science fiction" oriented individuals who might be considered as Scripturally weak in doctrine will drive a wedge between such individuals and the true path to salvation. As indicate in [6], the Scriptures indicate, in my opinion, that such a process could easily lead to individual damnation, which is one of the most basic goals of the Adversary.

[8] One aspect of this ministry is deceptive scientifically since there is a prior claim. For years, this ministry has attempted to model Divine attributes by applying what is claimed is some form of standard "dimension" theory. However, I know of no, and I repeat no, scientific definition for this concept that has any relation to the attributes this ministry attempts to model. Indeed, not even "infinite dimension" theory is satisfactory. Unless this ministry gives an acceptable definition for the concept they apply, then their model is vacuous. It is extremely clear that within the Scriptures the supernatural attributes of the Godhead are, at the most, but partially comprehensible when they are compared to natural attributes. But, for each of these numerous comparisons it is stated specifically that the supernatural attributes are very dissimilar from natural attributes in power and divinity. Since standard mathematical structures, including finite and infinite dimensional structures, are used to model natural-system behavior within our universe and the natural attributes of God's created, using these same structures to model God's supernatural aspects is closely related to pantheism. Any claim this ministry makes that the standard mathematical structure they use models aspects of the supernatural attributes of God is completely false and designed to take glory unto themselves and will lead many individuals towards everlasting damnation. Another reason for this warning is that as Ross' "God" concept evolves it is converging towards a type of "Cosmic Logos" of the Alice Bailey occultism.

It is significant to the claims of this ministry that the first non-pantheistic mathematical model ever devised that does, indeed, model the attributes this ministry attempts to, but fails to so model, does so by modeling processes that mirror concepts stated specifically within the Scriptures. The model was constructed from 1979 - 1982 (Herrmann, R. A. "The reasonableness of metaphysical evidence," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, 34(1)(1982), 12-23), appears to pre-date any comparable work by Hugh Ross, and it is very, very strange that this ministry is apparently not aware of this model's existence when one considers this ministry's association with the American Scientific Affiliation.

[9] Relative to other less significant concerns, members of his ministry, apparently, have no comprehension of the modern notion of "abrupt appearance" in mature and structured form. This is clear from statements made where this concept is discussed only relative to nineteenth century writer Grosse. The modern concept is completely distinct from the Grosse theory.

[10] Finally, I cannot find a compelling statement from his ministry that affirms that only through true supernatural Holy Spirit verification, as required by 1 John 2:27, and not by scientific means can the correctness of any such theological doctrine be determined.

[For a brief discussion of the theology of the Hugh Ross ministry, please consider the following Web site.]

Significant Additional Information

Due to their concentration upon purely unguided naturalistic processes, the ministry discussed above actually denies the true creation power of God. Scriptural statements such as the above quoted Hebrews 1:3 indicate such a power, a power that does not exist within the naturalistic mechanisms advocated by this organization, a power that cannot be modeled by means of any standard mathematical theory that is claimed to correspond in any manner to the Scriptures. One could characterize such a power in an easily understood manner by stating that if God simply stopped "thinking about" His creation, so to speak, then His creation would cease to exist. Is there an actual scientific model that predicts, not just assumes or hypothesizes, the rational existence of just such a power?

The mathematical theory that yields the scientific model that solves the General Grand Unification Problem can be directly interpreted using the theological language that appears in Genesis 1. The interpretation is exact and absolutely literal. No alterations in the meanings of the fundamental terms in Genesis 1 occurs and no additional assumptions are included. Further, this same scientific structure models exactly the sustaining power described in Hebrews 1:3. Since the modeling processes use the most consistent modern mathematical procedures that were discovered but a few years ago, rather than the inconsistent mathematical interpretation procedures used to construct the model advocated by this ministry, you should expect, unless you are well prepared in the appropriate technical requirements, that the actual correspondence to Genesis 1 might be somewhat difficult to comprehend in any depth.

Actual scientifically generated models that do so correspond to Genesis 1 can be found described within the article The U-cosmology. Further, when this U-cosmology is coupled with the Microeffects - Genesis Flood model, then the combination of effects completely and literally corresponds to the Biblical account. Indeed, it appears that these combined models will satisfy all of the observational data as well as or better than the model advocated by this ministry. This combination is a model that presents a counter to the model proposed by this ministry and demonstrates that the "correct" model cannot be known by scientific means. Indeed, the same modeling procedures can be used to model numerously many other possible creation scenarios that will diverge completely from these literal scenarios. From a scientific viewpoint, to imply that the model presented by this ministry has been established as the correct model is the greatest deception of all. You must use "other" means, and definitely not the "scientific method," to make a choice. But, of course, the choice might depend upon whether you consider the Bible as the inerrant word of God, a document that should not be altered in any manner whatsoever. However, most certainly, the choice is entirely at your discretion. [Note: With respect to the U-cosmology, I challenge anyone within this ministry to show that it is not obtained by means of a correct scientific modeling procedure, that it does not follow the exact and literally stated Biblical format, or that it uses any form of significant Biblical speculation.]

It is my firm belief that this ministry, and many others, misinterpret, purposely I think, Romans 1: 19-20. There are various interpretations of these verses that often seem to depend upon the prideful nature of a ministry. The proudful interpretations always relate to the ability of the human being to describe the actual processes God has used to create. The Hugh Ross ministry often justifies its efforts based upon such a proudful interpretation. But, the MA-model, absolutely substantiates that such interpretations are not Biblical. Below is presented a very brief portion from the above mentioned U-cosmology article that discusses these proudful interpretations. The MA-model shows that the "heathen's" knowledge of God need not come from a detailed, yet fallible, human explanation as to how God created but, rather, from an appreciation for God's immense creative power, and, possibly, the simple knowledge that the universe exhibits a kind of beauty or design that can only be attributed to a higher intelligence.

Hundreds of times within the Scriptures, we are told how different God is from His created. How "incomprehensible" are His ways, and the like. The problem is that we are also told that we can "reason together" with God. One certainly needs to have some idea as to what God's created life forms can or cannot comprehend about God's creative and sustaining processes. The major verses that are claimed to uphold humankind's ability to have vast knowledge relative to the behavior and formation of the universe exterior to the solar system are Psalm 19:1 as it is coupled with Romans 1:19-20. I suggest it should rather be coupled with Romans 1:19-23. The form of the Greek word here and often translated as "made" and which appears only twice in this form, seems to be much broader in its sense and might be better translated as "achievements" not just those exhibited by His material creation.

What these verses appear to be discussing are God's "attributes." In particular, His achievements "clearly" indicate His unseen, by human senses, "eternal" power and Divinity. I am not the only individual that claims this interpretation. Luther writes relative to Romans 1:20, " 'are clearly seen,' perceived not by the senses but by understanding His 'eternal power and Divinity'." Indeed, the Greek elemental meaning of the word translated as "eternal" is "un-perceived," where "perceived" means, in general, to gain knowledge by the senses. . . . Further, I doubt that in the first century one would conclude from the more complete Romans 1:19-23 that Paul intended one to believe that humankind could also comprehend in any great detail the actual processes God used to create. Much more likely, Paul means that humankind has an understanding of these Divine attributes from what is observed because such observations exhibit the power and Divinity of God; a power and Divinity that can be but partially comprehended and, most certainly, can not be replicated by His created. These verses are directed to individuals who do not acknowledge the highly incomprehensible aspects of God as represented by His wondrous creative power. They thus glorify Him not, but became vain through the use of human imaginations as a replacement for God's creative power, a creative power that is claimed by corruptible individuals to be humanly comprehensible.

In numerously many ways, the MA-model upholds this impossibility of human comprehension. . . . Although but a slight comparison, individuals often seem to appreciate artistic endeavors to a much greater degree, than would ordinarily be expected, if they don't understand exactly how the end results are achieved.

An Open Letter to Dr. Hugh Ross

February 18, 1989

Hugh Ross, PhD
Reasons to Believe
P.O. Box 5978
Pasadena, California 91107

A CRITIQUE

Dear Hugh,

During the past month I have been reviewing all your tapes, printed essays, and booklets. It is been a valuable and edifying process for me. Your scientific knowledge is impeccable---I feel like I have taken a refresher course in astronomy and physics. I have truly been refreshed and stimulated in my thinking as a result of going through all your material. You have provoked me to look at science and the Bible afresh and to spend more time on my own Christian world view concerning creation. Since you have sharpened my view of Genesis through your effective lectures and keen insight, I am writing in hopes I can sharpen your views in return, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." I am not exactly a Bible-and-science concordist as you are, but I am eager to support your ministry and to see your life have even deeper and continued impact on our present-day pagan culture. I agree that our observations of nature and our scientific models if they are correct must be in accord with the Bible. Our Christian faith is grounded in history and a detailed revelation from God who tells us a great deal about many subjects. I support your position against the irrationalists of our day who would throw out everything science has to say about creation. Your insights and experience have strengthened my own view of the creation which is different in some respects from yours. When I was a new Christian I held a world view more similar to yours based more strongly on modern astronomy and physics, but as I have come to know the Bible better I have moved gradually away from a belief that modern science was all that insightful. Please accept my comments and critique as encouragements and challenges, not as a fault-finding attack on your ministry or your personal beliefs. I took notes and wrote out comments as I listened to your tapes and these are not in any special order in what follows.

Astronomy and Biology: Your treatment of the consequences of a finite universe (as seen by the astronomer) as it relates to the impossibility of evolution is outstanding and needs to be given a much wider hearing in my opinion. Your personal testimony is thrilling to me and I rejoice at God's calling for your life.

Biblical Truth and Scientific Truth: Science gives us limited models and theories based on observables from the physical universe. These models are based on the uniformity of natural laws. They are also extrapolations based on available evidence. Scientific truth is relative and limited, Biblical truth is absolute and eternal. In presenting truth to non-scientific audiences I believe it is important to show that scientific theories are not absolute, and scientific truth is in a different category than Biblical truth. We should always qualify our remarks by saying something like: "According to the best and most careful scientific data (which I subscribe to), such and such appears to be true." Or, "The Bible says thus and so, but that leaves room for us to hold to several different possible views based on scientific evidence. I personally hold to the hypothesis that..." Without these kinds of qualifying remarks the lay person can get the idea that science is absolutely certain of what it talks about. The untrained listener has no way of knowing the underlying assumptions of a scientific theory, the presuppositions of the scientist, the history of science, alternate explanations and the often arbitrary ways science moves ahead by trial and error. Physics is fortunate to have had a number of Christians in its ranks, especially in the past but we need to make clear that sinful, fallen man can not hope to figure things out correctly if he ignores revelation. In your taped talks I get the impression that you hold scientific truth to be on equal footing with the Bible. I am sure this is not what you really believe but I am concerned that you could be misunderstood. Modern day rationalism starts with man, not God, and attempts to build a whole view of the universe that fits together into a cohesive whole without God being needed or necessary anywhere.

The History of Science is revealing as to man's being deceived in the past. We must guard against the possibility that modern science could also be deceived. Living in an age of advanced systems of knowledge is not necessarily the same as being closer to the truth or to Biblical wisdom. There is an increase in knowledge in our age, but regarding a clear perception of reality I Cor. 1 says "none of the rulers of this age knew it, otherwise they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." Ian Taylor (In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order) has helped me to appreciate that much of modern science was founded by men who wanted an alternate way of viewing the universe that denied Biblical creation. All science is built on an underlying philosophy. All scientific theories begin with assumptions and limitations. Usually we oversimplify things beyond what they really are to make the amount of work we have to do reasonable. Today's science is mostly naturalistic and far removed from a Biblical point of view.

Francis Schaeffer and "modern, modern science: A major change in western society has occurred in the past half century especially. Earlier, men believed in a spiritual world and the existence of a supreme being (there was a general consensus), though not many were necessarily Christians. Biblical assumptions about reality prevailed in all aspects of culture. (Western science could only come into existence in a society with underlying Biblical presuppositions---as you note). Belief in the existence of God and even of the spiritual world itself have eroded away gradually until modern man has reached a point of existential despair. Truth is seen as entirely relative. Secular humanism and naturalism prevail. Only the material aspects of creation are seen as real, the realm of the spiritual has turned into a vacuum. We must be very careful because modern science operates with the "upper storey" empty, whereas in the Bible the upper storey is the real, enduring, and permanent. The notion of human "progress" or social evolution is an illusion. Solomon says there is nothing new under the sun, so we must not suppose that we really know more about the universe than the ancients. Man is open to deception. Satan is always working to conceal truth that reflects to the glory of God or the liberation of man. "The whole world lies in the lap of the evil one." Any new truth from science which reflects on a truly biblical position will be vigorously resisted by the powers of evil and darkness. When man ignores God, God gives us up to believe the lie. Evolutionary theory a good example. Failure to accept light, understanding, wisdom and insight from God causes God to give man over the believe something false: "The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, (lit: "the lie") so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thessalonians 2:10-13) The nature of "the lie" is described for us in Romans 1 and consists in the delusion that man is master of his own fate, captain of his own soul, and capable of being his own God. In First Corinthians 1 and 2 Paul addresses the unbelief which especially characterizes the intellectual and scientific leaders in any age. He notes that whole systems of human thought can be wrong and that "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, and chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God".

"Dual Revelation: Science and the Bible": You claim a dual revelation from God is available to us, in science and in the Bible. I believe such a claim needs careful qualification. Finding beauty, harmony, design and patterns in nature is not the same thing as finding beauty in a scientific theory or model. God does not deceive by falsifying nature, but scientists are easily deceived in the ways they interpret nature. "The Gospel According to Science". To my way of thinking this statement of yours on one of your tapes could be very misleading. I suggest you consult some Bible scholars or read further on the subjects of Special vs. General Revelation. Science is a human endeavor, part of the world system which is under the dominion of Satan---the god of this world. Science is based on the efforts of fallible human beings who are easily deceived. It is quite one thing to collect data---facts and measurements about the world---and quite another matter to fit these observations into coherent theories. Nature gives some evidence but only shadows that point to the existence of God. It is going much too far to say that nature "contains the full gospel" as you suggest in one of your tapes. Nature reveals that there is a Creator, a Designer, an awesome Intelligence behind things. Nature however does not tell us abut redemption, the incarnation, eschatology, or the nature of evil. Romans 2 merely says that if a man follows what little moral light he has and responds to it, God will give him more light until he is saved. There is one way to God, but there are many ways to Christ. But, no one seeks for God, and God must come and rescue the elect, otherwise they would never turn to seek Him on their own (Romans 3). All men are born with light from God in conscience and in the spirit, (as you note), and rejection of that light and the evidence of God's power and glory in nature is cause for God's abiding and future wrath on mankind. Hebrews 1:1-4 further indicates that even the knowledge and information given in the OT by the prophets was incomplete, but now God's last and final word has come to us when God spoke through His Son who is the heir of all things. Without the Bible we would be animists or polytheists, totally confused and in great darkness about ourselves and the nature of the one, true God.

The Danger of Reductionalism---There remains Great Mystery in Creation: God's dialogs with Job show that Job hasn't figured out how God created things, and can't! Job does has a good amount of knowledge about God derived from nature. He also has a personal relationship with God and some years' experience in matters of faith. Yet when God finally speaks to Job, the LORD's response shows that man is unable to probe the mysteries of creation to any depth! This is confirmed by Solomon who says: "He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he (man) cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11) Isaiah records: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts". (Isaiah 55:7-9) The passage in Ecclesiastes seems to indicate that the mystery of time can not be unraveled by man because God has hidden it. This may mean that we can not establish once and for all whether or not the universe is old or young. I believe that as history moves forward science and the Bible must come into closer agreement, otherwise we are drawing incorrect conclusions from our observations of nature. However we must not insist that God did things in a certain way unless we are given that information in Scripture. This is the difference between naturalism and supernaturalism. A supernatural view of the universe is not the same as a magical or mythical view, however.

Theistic evolution comes in two varieties: the first says that God is the First Cause who built all the necessary things into the original very low entropy of the universe and allowed all the details to unfold naturally after t=0. The second view is that the universe runs mostly by natural processes, but that God intervenes occasionally to bring about exceedingly improbable events such as the origin of life and transitions between species (punctuated equilibrium, for example). Biblical creation takes neither of these views. You claim not to believe in theistic evolution, but you don't appear to me to depart too far from the premises of the second type of theistic evolution.

"Since the fall, however, man has sought to act independently of his Creator. As one writer observes, 'Since the fall the human mind has been wholly pagan.' The pagan mind resists submitting results of its reason against Scripture as a check. It even desires to stand as a judge of Scripture. There are just two ways to approach issues. Either we view everything through the Bible, or we view the Bible through man's autonomous ideas." (Donald E. Chittick, The Controversy Roots of the Creation-Evolution Conflict, Multnomah Press, Portland, 1984---this is an excellent book and the author has a very fine reputation. He has a PhD in Chemistry).

The Physical World a World of Shadows: The spiritual is not far from the earth and outside of space and time beyond the stars. It surrounds us within and without. In fact we are immersed in spirit, and God Himself is a Spirit. When Paul the Apostle visited Athens he noted: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown God.' What you therefore worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one (man, Adam) every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hopes that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for 'In him we live and move and have our being;' as even one of your poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God over-looked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed (Jesus), and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:22-31)

The spiritual realm, which lies behind the smallest atomic particles, within the innermost part of man, and beyond the galaxies is commonly referred to as heaven, the heavenly places in the Bible. It is the source of all things, the dimension of the permanent, the eternal, the enduring: "Now faith is the assurance (hupostasis = "to stand under", i.e., support, foundation) of things not seen. For by faith the men of old gained divine approval. By faith we understand that the world (aionos = ages, or world) was created (katartizo = to fit, or render complete) by the word (rhemati = the oracles, sayings, or spoken utterances) of God, so that what is seen came into being out of that which is unseen." (Hebrews 11:3) The physical world, the material realm, is perfectly real and solid (not maya, or illusion, as Hinduism supposes), but it is the world of the fading, the transitory, the impermanent, and the perishable. Evil has disturbed our universe, interfered with both the realm of the spirit and I think also with some of the laws of physics (I agree with you that the Second Law of Thermodynamics has probably not changed since creation). But I suspect that evil (in both the angelic and human realms) has destroyed the original close and harmonious coupling between the spiritual and material dimensions of existence. What we now see and observe and experience is not the creation as it was finished at the end of the sixth day, but an aging, decaying old creation. If we choose to know God through faith in Jesus His Son, we perceive also that we are being made part of a new race, and prepared to live in a new creation which is now under construction: "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (II Corinthians 5:6-8)

Consider a group of scientists who set up to study a redwood tree. They measure the shadow of the tree cast by the sun. The watch the shadow change as the day progresses. But they never bother to touch or measure the tree itself. How much better it is in attempting to scientifically understand trees to measure real trees than merely their shadows. Thus we can not fully understand the things of our physical world without some perception of the enduring, permanent world of the spiritual. In C.S. Lewis' Great Divorce, we have a good picture of heaven. The grass there is so solid it hurts the feet of newcomers from earth who have not walked around enough yet so as to toughen themselves, and to "grow more solid" (they arrive as wisps of gray smoke from earth). The spray of a waterfall is painful, attempts to wade in a rushing stream are disastrous. Folks who have been in heaven awhile have grown more solid from climbing into the mountains in the direction of the light. The real universe includes the spiritual and the eternal. They are not isolated and independent but are closely coupled systems. These things modern science ignores.

A number of references in scripture tell us that things built by God in the spiritual world are more solid, permanent, and durable than their "shadowy" and temporary counterparts in the physical world. For example, while on Mt. Sinai, God told Moses to erect a Tabernacle and equip it with an elaborate set of furnishings: an altar, a laver, a great lampstand, a table of incense, a table for the shewbread, the Ark of the Covenant. The ark had to be built exactly as prescribed in every detail, "...And see that you (Moses) make them (all these things) after the pattern for them which is being shown to you on the mountain." (Exodus 25:40) The writer of the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament mentions the heavenly tabernacle when referring to Jesus as our Great High Priest: "Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the sanctuary and the true tabernacle which is set up, not by man, but by the Lord." (Hebrews 8:1-2) The writer continues: "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, (not made with hands, that, is not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption...under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified by these rites, but the heavenly things with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf." (Hebrews 9:11-12, 22-24). Yet another reference to this heavenly tabernacle or temple is given in Revelation 15:5-8. One cannot hope to learn much about reality by looking at the shadows of things instead of their real form and substance! We cannot hope to understand ourselves or the universe (the heavens and the earth) if we ignore the information God has given us about the whole package. From a Biblical standpoint we can not hope to understand the physical world if we ignore the spiritual.

The Creator is the Observer in Genesis One: It is quite true that the observer is on earth starting with Genesis 1:2 and that the narrative concentrates on the earth, but perhaps it is reading something into the Scripture to say that the earth was covered with a thick cloud layer shutting out of the sun. (Job 38 does suggest clouds around the early earth). Genesis 1:1,2 may apply to the raw material of the entire universe being brought into being in darkness, not just the conditions prevailing on the earth itself. The origin of the sun before the earth is surmised by science but nowhere stated in Scripture. I believe that as responsible Christians we must always be careful not to force our current theories to fit the Bible. The Bible must sit in judgment over all of our frail and tentative ideas derived from science.

Just who is the observer in Genesis 1? It is not an angel, not Moses, not Adam. The Observer is the Creator Himself, who after creating studies His own work and pronounces it good. This is clear I think from Proverbs 8 (we know from the NT that Christ is the Wisdom of God): "The LORD possessed me (Wisdom) at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men. And now, my sons, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Happy is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD; but he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death."

God's creation of the universe was like the work of a master craftsman. First He brought the raw material into existence. Then He formed the raw material, fashioning it like a potter at the wheel or like an artist working from a pallet. The elements seem to have all been created first, but the building, forming, and fashioning of the creation extended over six days. I do not think the six days must necessarily be exactly 24 hour days, but to suggest long geologic ages is forcing the text in my opinion. God is imminently involved in the work of creation. Evidently, the entropy of the early universe was lowered in stages, as order and design were built into the universe by the activity of the Spirit of God.

"Literal" Interpretation of Genesis: If one sets aside for the moment all one thinks is true about creation, based on science, then Genesis says that God first created space, including the spiritual world, water and earth. Then He brought light into existence by divine fiat. All this on the first day. Now "God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all." Physical light is, however, something God created. The universe seems to have been dark up until light was created. This makes the Big Bang model highly suspect! God proceeded to mold and shape his new universe bringing the sun, moon and stars into existence on the fourth day, and so forth. If I were to develop a science of astronomy where none previously existed I would begin with Genesis as a revelation from God, then pray, then look at the evidence. This would be the only way I could hope to sort out the available data in the correct way. This is not the process that modern astronomy followed in coming to its presently-held models. No matter how elegant they are I must hold theories such as the Big Bang as highly tentative and quite possibly wrong. It is not that the facts or basic observations are all wrong, or that God has deceived me. The fault lies with the interpretation of the suite of available data. As men of God we must not give listeners the impression that we are adding to the Bible or that our own particular interpretation is superior than another point of view which other godly men subscribe to. "You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it; that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you." (Deuteronomy 4:2)

The Big Bang Model means a "hands off universe": The whole idea of the big bang is that the history of the universe is totally determined once the initial conditions have been fixed. No real room for subsequent intervention by God. You yourself note this eloquently in your talks. Any divine interventions would upset the delicate balance rendering the present cosmology incorrect. This contrasts with a universe formed and fashioned in every detail by a loving Craftsman. The Big Bang theory is an extrapolation into the remote past---a theory based on present observables and a set of assumptions. The non-involvement of God after t=0 is presupposed by this theory. This can not be established from Scripture as the way things really happened. "Let There Be Light" is a powerful command of God, calling light into existence. For the Son of God to merely roll back the cloud layer covering the earth so as to let the light from space shine onto the earth would be a trivial command. Likewise for most of the creative work of God to be condensed into "the creation event", i.e. the hypothetical big bang explosion, leaves God very little work to do during the ensuing six days. The Christian church has always understood God as having spoken the universe into existence by a series of commands. This is brought out in John Chapter One. If most of the important work of creating the universe is all over and done with by the end of Genesis 1:2, the commands that follow on the remaining five days are miniscule in comparison, except for the emergence of life. However the commands that bring life into being are weighted equally with the rest of the spoken words of God calling everything into being.

The Role of the angels in nature. The observed precision of the laws of physics could well be due to the precision work of angels regulating all natural process during our present epoch. We must be careful to avoid naturalism as an explanation for what we observe in the world by the limited tools of science. For example in the calming of the sea of Galilee, Jesus spoke to an angel: "On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, 'Let us go across to the other side.' And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, 'Teacher, do you not care if we perish?' And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, 'Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?' And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?'" (Mark 4:35-41) Does God bring about the events of the Book of Revelation by stepping in and changing the laws of physics, or does He merely command the angels who control all the forces of nature and they begin to move in different ways? I think the latter is probably closer to the way things work. The difference between naturalism and Biblical supernaturalism is very great, especially in our time. I must allow for the possibility that science could be seriously wrong on some issues because of deliberate exclusion of God from scientific thoughts and processes in the past 150 years. (There is a trend back towards supernaturalism in some sectors, but often it is a reversion to eastern mysticism, not a return to a Biblical view).

Astrology as you note in your printed essay is based on Nimrod's false religion from Babylon. I would agree with you as a physicist that there are no known physical mechanisms that could explain how the position of the planets at the time of one's birth could possibly influence personality. And as you state, astrology is forbidden to us by the Bible because it brings us under the influence of demonic powers in the occult realm. But if there are angels associated with the stars and planets that the influence of these angels on the quality of human life is not unreasonable from a Biblical view point. (C.S. Lewis develops this idea in the first book of his science fiction trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet). In any case we do not have a pure Hebrew astrology today but only the pagan, thoroughly corrupted version from the Babylonian mystery religion. For secular scientists to be concerned about negating astrology is understandable when the basis of modern science is naturalism and rationalism and when supernaturalism is excluded from the discussion. (See enclosure on recent research paper concerning The Mars Effect). In a sense astrology is difficult to study by the scientific method because the data tends to be mostly subjective among the community of believers in this "art."

Your day-age arguments: The narrative in Genesis One draws on the imagery of the calendar week known to us until today. There are seven days in our weeks, by the term evening and morning we always mean 24 hour days. When the Bible means "age" it is usually so stated. The term "Day of the LORD" is obviously an extended period from the context in which it is used. For instance each of the Genesis creation days is an evening and a morning. The use of the term "evening and morning" to refer to a long period of time is not known in Scripture. In English we do say, "this is the dawning of a new age" but we mean an historical epoch or era not a geologic period. If you decide to hold to the day-age theory you should acknowledge that godly Bible scholars have many arguments for these days being 24 hour days from internal Biblical evidence. The case can not be decided on the basis of science. It may be that we have to live with considerable tension between the modern scientific view and the Biblical picture of things. Have you seen the excellent discussion featuring both sides (the day-age and the 24 hour day) featured in The Genesis Debate, Ronald Youngblood, Ed., (Thos. Nelson Publishers, 1986)?

Events on the Sixth Day: Creation of the higher animals and man. The text does not say that Adam studied, analyzed and named the animals on the sixth day. The creation of man as male/female occurred on the sixth day, but the separation of Adam/Eve into Adam and Eve evidently came later. The best explanation is that Eve was taken out of Adam months or years after the creation of Adam. Before Eve was presented to him, Adam had ample time to study and name the animals. Likewise we do not know how many months or years elapsed before the fall. Adam died at age 930 so we can set some limits on when he was created. Adam was created as an adult, evidently, so his body would carry an appearance of initial age, perhaps 30 years or so.

"The Seventh Day is still open": Scripture does not say this. Please note that the Scripture says "God rested on the seventh day", not "God is resting". All this means is that God's creative activity ceased at a certain point of time. God did not rest from other activities such as the daily sustenance of the old creation, nor the building of the new creation through the Last Adam. The absence of an evening on the seventh day is not a proof for the day-age theory, but would tend to deny continuous creation models. The rest we are all to enter into by faith is described in Hebrews 4. It may be compared to God's rest on the seventh day, rest from wilderness wanderings under Joshua, rest from warfare under King David,etc. The pattern of the seven days of creation is a repeated pattern remembered in the Jewish calendar week.

The Eighth Day: The millennium is nowhere called the "eighth day" in Scripture. In a literal sense there is no eighth day in the Bible. In a symbolic sense the eight day, the day of new beginnings, began with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Whenever the Bible talks about the eighth day it is always the first day of the week after the Sabbath. I do not feel that the symbolism of the 8th day fits the millennium very well. The 1000 year reign of Christ on earth is more of a fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles I think.

A Local or Universal Flood? Either there is no evidence for a world-wide flood, as you claim, or the evidence is so overwhelming it is everywhere. The topography of the earth before the flood was probably radically different from now. I believe that there was one land mass (continent) before the flood. If the present continents were flattened with a bulldozer one could cover everything to considerable depth with presently existing water. A drastic change in land mass distribution, mountains, valleys, topography at the time of the flood seems most reasonable to me. To give just one example, the isostatic loading and unloading of a great amount of water over the land would be a major impact in subsequent mountain building. The present Mt. Ararat (16,900 feet) is a volcano and may be of recent origin. The ark may have landed on relatively low hills. Mt. Everest may have been elevated subsequent to the flood, for example during the Days of Peleg when accelerated continental drift may have occurred. A different land-mass distribution in and of itself would soon change the climate and weather patterns world wide. I seem to be less of a uniformitarian than you. The Bible uses vivid language to describe the destruction of all of mankind and a great natural disaster at the time of the flood. This inclines me strongly to believe the flood was a great and terrible world-wide catastrophe which changed our present earth drastically.

Satan's domain and power: Evil in the universe is not confined to man. Satan may have been the greatest of all the angels, his revolt with one third of the angelic host, may have disrupted things radically throughout the universe since his fall. There is good reason to suppose that Satan and his angels have wreaked havoc in creation, marring and scarring it in attempts to destroy what God made.

Miracles are a Complex Subject. Are these outside energy inputs from the spiritual world, or are they mere arrangements of things within our space-time domain? Did the resurrection of Jesus affect the natural order? Science does not ordinarily investigate one-of-a-kind events. The daily sustenance of the universe by God's power may be one continuous miracle which we see as a set of immutable laws of nature.

Frequency of earthquakes increasing? I have never seen any data on this frequent claim by TV evangelists. Is it only that earthquakes are now recorded and studied more diligently and carefully? I assume the increase of natural disturbances in the tribulation period is a result of God's intervening judgments? If earthquakes are now more frequent, what is the causal mechanism? Especially in a universe 1010 years old why would earthquakes soar in the last 100 years (only one part in 108 years of history)? My reading of the Olivet Discourse suggests to me that escalating earthquakes and natural disasters characterize the Great Tribulation period (3.5 years), not the "last days", i.e. not the last 2000 years. I would be most grateful for any references you might have on earthquake frequency.

"Universe A can Never Interact with Universe B": This is surely true only for material universes. Our universe is surrounded by an unseen spiritual realm which is the source of all things. God sustains the universe from the realm of the spirit, interacting with the physical world in ways not known to us. "How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out."

Jesus' role in sustaining the universe by His mighty word of power: To assume that God wound up the universe at the start of the Big Bang and made a few creative additions afterwards (in the six days of creation) leans towards naturalism or theistic evolution. God is more than a First Cause. The Bible says a lot about His day by day involvement in the world. He did not create the universe and then depart to play the role of a spectator observer. Note for example Colossians 1:16-17 "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Also, Hebrews 1:1-4: "In many separate revelations - each of which set forth a portion of the Truth - and in different ways God spoke of old to [our] forefathers in and by the prophets, [But] in the last of these days He has spoken to us in [the person of a] Son, Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time - (that is) He made, produced, built, operated and arranged them in order. He is the sole expression of the glory of God - the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine - and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God's] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power..."

Jesus governs all things: C.S. Lewis says that all science can really say is that Humpty Dumpty is falling down, (Miracles, 1947, Macmillan Publishers---this book has an excellent discussion of the difference between a naturalistic and a supernaturalistic view of the universe). The Bible knows nothing of natural law. Instead God regulates everything in perfect harmony. He rules over every facet of nature through His angels. All His workings are in perfect balance and harmony. He rules from the spiritual world into the physical. Some angels may well be "unstable governors" producing unusual events in the heavens such as novas and supernovas. Again we must be careful to avoid reductionism and naturalism! The angels are more than observers.

Vapor Canopy Model: Translating "mist" as normal rainfall seems very strained. How can rain come up out of the ground to water the earth? A lot of scientific work has been done on a vapor canopy model and much of what I have seen is quite reasonable science. Genesis 2:6 does seem to describe a period before which there was no rain on the earth. The Ice Canopy Model. Donald Patten in general is far out, like Velikovsky was. I agree with you that there seems to be no real substance to Patten's models. I have his books but keep them in my pseudoscience collection.

A Geocentric Universe? Science does not know where the center of the universe is. The fact that earth as inhabitable is so incredibly unlikely in all the known universe is suspicious. Earth is the moral center of the universe. We can't prove the earth is not the center of the universe! The Son of God appears to have created the universe from the earth as a vantage point. Presumably the center of the universe is located where the throne room of God is located, but that is in the heavenlies. As far as the physical universe is concerned earth emerges as mighty important and completely unique according to your own very fine analysis of the improbability of another planet like ours in the known universe.

An Aesthetic Argument. The universe has existed for 1010 years but man for only 104 years? To me this does not seem reasonable for a universe created by the Logos of God. To have an empty universe before man for great periods of time seems strange: "For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!): 'I am the LORD, and there is no other.'" (Isaiah 45:18). The Anthropic Principle is not quite right, however the Creator made man most like Himself and made the universe as a home for man, and man given the charge to have dominion. Beauty and harmony in nature are evidence of God's handiwork, but beauty and elegance in science may not be! Since Jesus, the Logos of God created the universe, it is not unreasonable that the creation should have some features which remind man of himself. Also, Satanic counterfeits are as close to the truth as possible, so we need to be especially cautious about new theories that appear to give all the right answers at first.. Intuitively I would expect the creation events to follow one another in rapid order. God is a God of beauty and harmony. He is the Supreme Architect and the Master Builder.

Absolute Time. We must be careful not to claim our clocks run on the same standard as God's clocks! The writer of Genesis can only make a record when someone tells him how to keep time. Modern science assumes time is an absolute, and that man has that clock in his hands. The clock we are given for keeping time by in Genesis is the motion of sun, moon and stars for an observer on earth.

Constancy of Atomic Constants: At least four careful statistical analyses by competent statisticians in the last two years claim that the available data on measurements of the velocity of light give confidence levels of 90-95% that c is not a fixed constant. These findings can not be now dismissed so lightly. Quite independent of this statistical information, it is perfectly possible to hypothesize that c is not a constant and examine the consequences in various equations and phenomena of physics. Barry Setterfield claims the results of doing this very thing are quite realistic and that the resulting model is better than the existing one and more consistent with the Bible. There is no a priori reason why c should be a fixed constant, either in physics or in theology. It is very easy for science to overlook things, and to oversimplify according to Occam's Razor. The new science of chaos is a good example. Lo and behold even in chaos there is often order emerging from the noise if one looks for it in the right way. God's actions in controlling the universe and regulating its every detail could be entirely in the noise level---"O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?' 'Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen." (Romans 11:33-36)

Exceeding Sinfulness of Sin: A strong view of man's total depravity leads one to conclude that the effects of human evil have a big effect on nature. I believe human evil has had such a big effect on nature.

"Death" in the Bible: Normally the word "death" in the Bible carries with it extremely negative connotations. Primarily there are three kinds of death (1) physical death, (2) spiritual death, and (3) the Second Death. Metaphors as such as being "dead to sin" or "dead to the law" do not carry the same weight as death which "enters the world through Adam's sin." Genesis 2:17 is very emphatic in Hebrew, "dying you shall die." Death is our great enemy, "the last enemy to be destroyed is death..." "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage." (Hebrews 2). I agree that there might have been a form of animal death in the world before the fall. But death is viewed as man's great and final enemy: "Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned--sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come." (Romans 5:12-14). It is reasonable to suppose that the animals multiplied and died before the fall---I don't know of any Scripture that specifically states this however. Possibly natural birth control prevailed among animals and men in the early days so that conception was much rarer or the sexual urge more easily controlled. Even if the animals died before the fall, they evidently were not subject to disease and violent destruction (not as we have now, "nature red in tooth and claw"). Isaiah speaks of the wolf lying down with the lamb and nature being subdued. I take this to mean a return to conditions that prevailed before the fall. Even so, death entered the human race as a result of sin and is not natural for our race. I think it is misleading to claim that death is "beneficial." I believe the battle between good and evil is fiercely pitched and that very powerful forces are at work to keep man ignorant of who God really is, or to throw us onto tangents once we do come to know Him. The devil would overthrow God Himself if he could, and destroy all life in the universe at the same time. The devil is not only a liar, he is a murderer from the beginning.

"Species go extinct naturally all the time". It is pure speculation on your part to suppose this is the way things always have been in the past. This is what we now observe, but we have no way of knowing that this is the way things always have been. Adam was given dominion over creation. It was his job to tend the garden and subdue the earth. In yielding himself to the enemy Adam lost the power and the title deed to the earth, plunging the created order into disarray. It is entirely possible that species die-offs are a result of the fall and the bondage all creation has been subject to as a result of the fall: "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration (douleia=bondage), not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." (Romans 8)

"Our Bodies Are Made from Ashes of Dead Stars". This is also speculation---you are relying on the "authority" of a scientific model, and science has no real authority from God. We do not know where the dust of the earth was actually brought into existence through stellar nuclear reactions, or whether the present distribution of the elements appeared abruptly by fiat creation. We must be careful to avoid causality---suggesting that God was constrained or is constrained to act only in certain ways. It seems to me from Genesis that God directly created the earth. No mechanism or intermediate stages for the formation of the earth are given in the Bible and we must be careful not add to Scripture, or to read into the Bible thinks that aren't there. On matters where Scripture is silent, we must be silent, or state clearly that we are speculating!

Pre-Adamic hominids. There is no hint of such in the Bible. You should state this clearly as a matter of your own personal belief based on science but not supported by the Bible. This reminds one of the Gap Theory which is now widely discredited, as you yourself believe. We must be careful in our desires to harmonize science and the Bible not to be dogmatic about scientific truth or even the set of facts available for our interpretation. "Let God be true though every man be false, as it is written..."

Longevity of the Patriarchs. The mechanism for reduced human longevity after the flood is not known, however a number of scientists have commented that increased flux of harmful cosmic rays probably would not account for the full amount of the decrease. Perhaps we need a biologist to tell us more about the aging processes, genetic damage, and possible causal mechanisms.

Missing Gaps in the Genealogies of the Bible. As far as I am able to determine the gaps in some of the genealogies in the Bible are almost all filled in elsewhere. The gaps are all minor in any case and the actual history of the gap-periods is usually known from elsewhere in the Biblical text. It is thus very difficult (I believe) to move Adam earlier than 5000 to 6000 B.C. Henry Morris concedes 10,000 years maximum. We must always be careful not to try and force the Scriptures to fit a contemporary science model of the fossil record. Chronologies are given for the line which leads from the First Adam to the Last Adam, so the Holy Spirit seems to have gone to extra trouble to give as an unbroken record of the blood line to Messiah. Your analysis of the apparent gaps would be helpful to see how you reach 10,000 to 25,000 years B.P. for Adam.

The Thomas Gold model for origin of petroleum and coal deposits is probably much better than the old model. Far too much gas, oil and coal has been found already to be attributed to a biogenic origin. These resources usually found along crustal found zones. Gold's deep earth methane model is consistent with a cold, accretionary formation of the earth. The old model of petroleum genesis is well over 100 years old and sadly outdated. For example the old model holds to a hot-molten-glob formation of the earth and all oil resources a result of biogenesis. (See T. Gold, Power from the Earth, 1987, $24.95). Regarding the formation of the earth note that Peter says the earth was "formed (compacted) out of water and by means of water." The Hebrew root word of erets means "to compact together."

Pleochroic halos. This topic needs more study and comment. The work of Robert Gentry is too thorough and too careful than to be lightly dismissed. Either the earth was formed suddenly, or radioactive decay did not start up until after the earth was formed. I can not see any way around the basic evidence from these halos at the present time. I assume you have Gentry's book?

The Gospel and Modern Man. I believe that apologetics generally has its greatest value among those who are already believers. The Gospel makes its appeal to conscience. Man's obstacle is pride and unbelief. The fact that the usual Genesis 1-11 interpretations impede modern man from coming to Christ does not mean these men will not be saved. Men will be saved by God if they are elected to salvation and have been chosen in Christ from the foundation of the world. Moral issues are more dominant. We must let the Bible govern our thinking whether or not the Bible is in accord with modern scientific views. Over long periods of time the scientific view should be more consistent with the Bible, but not necessarily in a short time frame, say 100 years. Entire civilizations have been misled in the past. Satan comes as an angel of light. Ancient Egypt had a very advanced science and effective, convincing magic arts and sorcery during the times of Joseph and Moses. Antichrist will evidently have a credible, convincing cosmology to support his view about the naturalistic origin of the universe. If, as you say, most modern astronomers are now deists I would still not expect dozens of them to flood into the church and be saved because of the impediment of intellectual pride, "For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."

Creation and the Supreme Court: You claim the real issue causing opposition to the teaching of creation in schools is really over the age of the universe. I disagree! I think that opposition to God and to the gospel is what is happening on such front-line engagements as the Supreme Court disputes about origins. I feel certain that the real tension these days is between naturalism and supernaturalism. As Frances Schaeffer has noted, modern man with his insistence on the materialistic universe being all there is, is threatened when He gets any hint that God might not be dead after all. Spiritual warfare is what's going on, and that struggle is not much dependent on the details of the belief system of the two sides. You'll find the same heated disputes in the abortion issue. The Christian side rightly values every individual life as a creation of God. The pro-abortionists insist they have a right to do as they please with their own bodies, not only with regard to abortion, but also including freedom to engage in casual sex without benefit of marriage. The first group believes man must be subject to God to be free and whole, the second group subscribes to the notion than man can be autonomous.

The Earth's Magnetic Field. No dynamo mechanism has ever been found to explain the postulated energy inputs needed to sustain the field. The measured field appears to be decreasing exponentially with a half life of only a few thousand years. The reversals before the current epoch certainly seem to be real---see Russ Humphreys' article in latest CRSQ for recent discussion of field reversals in the past. The early work of Thomas Barnes on the decay of the earth's field is perfectly credible even if his current work concerning relativity seems less so.

Psalm 104:30 and the "recreation" of life: "When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth." This whole Psalm is concerned with the worship of the God of creation. It does not suggest to me that God "recreated" anything after the close of creation week. The idea that God "recreates" anything does not correspond to anything I know about from Scripture.

Your UFO treatment is excellent, careful and thorough, except that Richard Haines (former NASA scientist and fellow member of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto) says UFO sightings seem to fall into two classes: positive and malevolent. I sent Dick your UFO tapes as he is keenly interested in getting to know you.

The Universe is a Home for Man. Jesus said, "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also." (John 14:1-3) Here "the Father's house" is clearly the universe we live in, the whole universe, which is made up of both the visible and the invisible. The universe, Jesus implied, is to be compared to a house having many rooms, all made to live in. Like the homes we live in, the various rooms serve various purposes. We have living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and perhaps a library-study. The first helpful thing about this passage is that it teaches us that heaven is a better and more pleasant home than the best we know here. This is not fiction or myth; Jesus was describing the way things really are. Further clues about the universe as a "house" designed to be lived in can be found elsewhere in the Bible. For example Yahweh says in Isaiah: "For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it); he did not create it a chaos, he formed it (to be inhabited!): I am the LORD, and there is no other." (Isaiah 45:18) "Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house which you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the LORD. But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit and who trembles at my word." (Isaiah 66:1,2) If we know now only that God's house contains a living room chair and its accompanying footstool, we nevertheless can infer the existence of kitchens, closets, banquet halls and libraries. For example, God's library must surely contain books in four-dimensional living color that contain in minute detail the history of the world as it really happened. Surely we shall find video tapes there containing the lives of all who have ever lived with thoughts, motives, and actual facts in open-books before us. After visiting the library, we might like to move outdoors and investigate the gardens in heaven after which Eden was patterned. In contrast with these statements the universe as seen by the astronomer's limited eyesight seems to me to be cold, sterile, impersonal and limited. The astronomer is looking at shadows that pale in comparison with the real. Reality is perceived accurately only through the eyes of faith.

Uniformitarianism is Specifically Denied in Scripture. In spite of a renewal of interest in catastrophism in recent years, man's belief in some form of uniformitarianism has characterized society since the beginning. Modern science is still quite uniformitarian in its ideas. Surely this deeply embedded notion in our minds that things never really have changed since creation is the reason the Apostle Peter left us such a clear word in his second epistle: "First of all you must understand this, that skeptics will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, 'Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.' They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be kindled and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire! But according to his promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these, be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the forbearance of our Lord as salvation. (2 Peter 3)

Truth is a Person. "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no man comes to the Father except by me." Paul says, "In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Solomon writes in Proverbs, "It is the glory of God to conceal things; it is the glory of kings to seek them out." The person who does know Christ or is ignorant on how to search out hidden truth be unlikely to discover an accurate cosmological model. "The natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God, indeed they are foolishness to him, and he can not know them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man understands all things..."

Though your Christian faith and theology seems orthodox, my world view is a bit different from yours based on your presentations to date. Your dual-revelation ideas trouble me. I do not believe modern astronomers have arrived at absolute knowledge concerning the age of the universe or the methodology of God's creative hand, for instance through the Big Bang hypothesis. In general I like to put more emphasis on the importance of the spiritual realm in understanding creation than you do. I am concerned that you err in the direction of naturalism, progressive creationism, and scientism. I have less confidence in modern scientific models and am willing to live with considerable tension between science and the Bible. I believe the most important creative activity of God took place on the Six Days rather than being limited to Genesis 1:1,2. I believe the Six Days were relatively short periods of time, not long geologic ages. I believe in a universal, not local, flood. I place time of Adam and the time of the flood more recently than you, and I therefore suspect radio-dating methods may be in error. I suspect the present interpretation of the fossil record is in error on some key points. I believe the topography of the earth and the climate changed radically at the time of the flood. I think there is every likelihood the universe has been seriously disrupted since it was created. This is a result of the cosmic rebellion among the angels under Lucifer, and the fall of man. I believe death came into the human race through the sin of Adam and that death is our great enemy. I do not believe there were any hominids on earth before Adam, and that the higher animals and Adam all came into being in the same time frame on the Sixth Day. I believe so-called "cave men" are degenerate branches of the race descended from Adam. Thus conventional dating schemes are suspect. I am convinced that scientific theories developed by sinful man (under the control of Satan, a deceiver and a murderer from the beginning) are frequently incomplete and tentative and need to be treated that way. "For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away...For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood."

Your presentations as they now stand seem to me like a half-way station between the world of the modern secular scientist and Biblical Christianity. I am sure you can continue to have a major impact in academic environments where science dominates thinking and discussions. My greatest concern is that you seem to me to be taking your own secular scientific world-view and attempting to force-fit it to the Scripture. I suppose this is partly what a good harmonist seeks to do in any generation. But if you are too dogmatic and opinionated about matters of science now, you may find yourself "obsolete" in a few years time. I think you would improve your presentations greatly if you made a clearer distinction concerning matters of scientific opinion and statements of belief based on the Bible. Perhaps you might want to mention that many godly men, Bible scholars and scientists who are Christians differ in their view of creation from your position yet that may not mean they are wrong and you are right. These issues seem to me to resemble the story of three blind Indians who discover their first elephant. One says elephants are like thin ropes, another says they are like walls, a third says they resemble tree trunks. Yet all are correct though each is complete by itself. In matters of science and the Bible it is not always a question of "either/or" but of "both/and"---holding what appear to be irreconcilable forms of information in tension until a way of resolution is found later on. My caution to you as your brother in Christ is that we all need to approach the Bible with open, uncluttered minds and let the Word of God enlighten us and constantly judge our understanding of things. In that process I think it is important to set aside temporarily what we think to be true from science and human experience. Being a good apologist you will I'm sure you want to revise your scientific material every year as so to keep current with our changing scientific understanding of things. And I am sure you and I will continue to grow in Christ so that we gain further light on the marvelous creation and our place in it. As scientists I do not think we really have a head start on truth, in fact we may be more easily impeded in our search for truth because of the danger of being puffed up by our own worldly accomplishments. "If any thinks himself wise in this world let him become a fool, that he might be truly wise." May our God bless you richly, beyond all your hopes and expectations.

Sincerely, your brother in Christ,

Lambert Dolphin 1103 Pomeroy Ave Santa Clara, CA, 95051 , 408-985-8327

Explanatory notes added 3/20/99

Notes:

* Additional critiques of Hugh Ross's position may be obtained by contacting The Institute of Creation Research (ICR), PO Box 2667, El Cajon, CA 92021. See especially, Hugh Ross, ICR, and the Bible and Hugh Ross, ICR, and the Facts of Science, both by James Stambaugh. ICR Impact Issues #217, 218, available online.
* Films for Christ, 2628 W. Birchwood Circle, Mesa, AZ 85202-1070, phone (602) 894 1300, published in 1994 the book, Creation and Time: A Report on the Book by Hugh Ross,by Van Bebber and Taylor. The above URL provides a helpful fact sheet on Dr. Ross.
* Book Review on above book by Bill Donohue
* Hugh Ross, Apologist or Heretic? by Bill Donohue
* What is Progressive Creationism?
* What's Wrong with Progressive Creationism, by Ken Ham
* A Response to Dr. Hugh Ross by Masami Usami
* Statement and Challenge by Dr. Russ Humphreys, 1/10/99.
* A Statement Concerning the Ministry of Dr. Hugh Ross, by Bolton Davidheiser, PhD, Zoology
* Comments on the Ministry of Hugh Ross, PhD by Prof. Robert A. Herrmann, PhD, USNA
* Hugh Ross' Extra-Dimensional Deity: A Review Article by William Lane Craig, JETS 42/2 (June 1999) 293-304.
* Expose of Hugh Ross' New Book "The Genesis Question," by Jonathan Sarfati From Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 13(2):22-30, 1999.
* Geologist Glen R. Morton's. review of "The Genesis Connection."
* The dubious apologetics of Hugh Ross, by Astronomer Danny Faulkner, CEN Technical Journal 13 (2) 1999
* A Leading Educator writes to the Supporters of Hugh Ross

Problems Emerging with Big Bang Cosmology

Hugh Ross defends that Big Bang theory as if it were the proven process by which our universe was brought into existence a long time ago. Astronomer Tom Van Flandern, who is neither a creationist nor a believer in a recent origin for the universe, nevertheless is not afraid of challenging the prevailing secular orthodoxy in astronomy. In his latest Meta Research Bulletin news section (12/15/97) he lists:

Ten Problems with the Big Bang

For a recent chat discussion on MSN, we prepared a list of the leading problems faced by the big bang in its struggle for viability as a theory:

(1) Static universe models fit the data better than expanding universe models.

(2) The microwave "background" makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.

(3) Element abundance predictions using the big bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.

(4) The universe has too much large scale structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years.

(5) The average luminosity of quasars must decrease with time in just the right way so that their mean apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely.

(6) The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe.

(7) The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform.

(8) Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe.

(9) The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the faintest quasars.

(l0) If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just a part in 10^59. My larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated.

A Strong New Big Bang Falsification Test

Is the redshift of galaxy light due to the expansion of the universe, or due to energy loss? If redshift were due to cosmological expansion, then all galaxies within a cluster would have the same cosmological redshift plus a small add-on contribution due to local motion within the cluster. The average dispersion of velocities within clusters would be independent of their distance from us except for possible evolutionary effects. On the other hand, if light redshift is with distance traveled because it loses energy, small dispersions at small redshifts would become larger dispersions at larger redshifts. The dispersion in redshift within clusters would increase linearly with distance. To be safe, corrections for Malmquist bias must be applied because we see only the most massive clusters at great distances. Of course, if velocity dispersion is shown to increase linearly with distance, someone might propose that cluster masses increase with the square of distance as one looks back toward the big bang, because this would give the same effect. However, such a proposal would contradict the mass-luminosity relationship. It therefore appears that such a test result would definitively falsify the big bang. Preliminary results in AJ, 857-867 (1994), ApJ 423, L89-L92 (1994), ApJ 478, 39-48 (1997) and AJ 114 1293-1296 (1997) rather suggest that this test will in fact falsify the big bang. In the last of these, an X-ray emitting cluster at redshift z = 0.813 was reported with a velocity dispersion of 1892 km/s. This dispersion is so great that it makes the cluster appear to be spread into a filament shape along the line of sight. The only alternative is that "velocity" dispersions in galaxy clusters do increase with distance.

(More interesting news from Tom Van Flandern will be found at his web site, at http://www.metaresearch.org/). Recent Article:What about the 'big bang'?, by Werner Gitt, Creation Ex Nihilo 20(3):42-44, June-August 1998 Welcome: Tuesday, 29-Aug-2000 16:04:39 EDT - 216.248.142.68 -

A Response to Dr. Hugh Ross by Masami Usami
http://web.fou.telenor.no/fou/ttolge/mnvit/hayama/usami/usami.htm

It is a great privilege to be here to give my testimony and respond to Dr. Ross' presentation.

First I want to tell a little about my own experience. I was born into a Shinto family. In school I learned only evolutionary thinking, so I was an evolutionist when I returned to Japan from Sakhalin (Russia). My brother became a Christian and I was surprised. I thought, "There is no creator and we have traditional, good religion, so why would my brother become a Christian?" I looked in my brother's Bible and read, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." I thought this was an unscientific thought because I had learned that evolution is science, and there is no creation. When I entered university I thought that science was the only way to reach truth.

At the university I searched every book in every field of science to find the answer to the Bible, to prove evolution. In the end, what I learned was that there is no scientific basis for evolution. There is only guess work, assumptions and circular reasoning. So I came back to the Bible and after days of turmoil in my mind, I trusted God and received Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.

I agree with many arguments Dr. Ross provides in disproving non-theistic evolution. Many of those arguments were developed by young-earth creationists. Yet some of his ideas do not agree with the Bible. Let us review his view of creation briefly.

1. God created the universe around 17 billion years ago, using the Big Bang. Dr. Ross was so convinced of this theory that he couldn't take the Bible literally. As a result, the rest of his view had to follow the evolution time scale.

2. Creation days are not 6 literal 24 hour days, but billions of years. The present age is the seventh day, which will continue until the end of the age.

3. Death and bloodshed have existed from the beginning of creation and is not the result of sin. Man was created after the vast majority of earth's history of life and death had taken place.

4. The flood of Noah was local, not global, although it did kill all humans outside the ark.

I certainly do not view these ideas as being Biblical. I believe Biblical creation requires these beliefs: 1. God created the universe several thousand years ago. Heaven and earth were created on the first of the 6 creation days. 2. Everything was created in the order mention in Genesis ch.1. These creation days are literal and not long periods. The seventh day is as literal as the rest, one 24-hour day. 3. Death and bloodshed were the result of Adam's sin. 4. Noah's flood was global and killed all humans, land animals and birds except those in the ark. Further, I believe such Biblical creation to be essential to Biblical Christianity.

Concerning the Hebrew word "Yom" (day), Strong's Concordance says, "a day whether lit. (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or fig. (a space of time defined by an associated term.)" In Gen. 1 there is no associated term to indicate a figurative meaning, so we must take it as literal. In Ex. 20:8-11 Moses used the word in a very literal way. God created for 6 days and rested 1, and thus did God sanctify the seventh day and commanded the people to rest the seventh day. He did not say to work 6 long ages and rest 1 long age. Anyhow, God is not still resting; He is working. Jesus said, "My Father is working still, and I am working" (Jn. 5:17). And Paul said, "God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." God is certainly working, not resting. The Bible says "God rested." That is past tense. It does not say, "God started resting." Let's get it right.

If, indeed, those were long ages, all flowers that are pollinated by insects and birds would have become extinct before insects were created. It had to be a short period. Dr. Ross' teaching that there was death before Adam sinned and that his sin resulted only in spiritual death is old news. The heretic, Pelagius, taught this around 400 A. D. The Pelagian view is that man was created mortal. He taught everything about us dies sooner or later, so it is and has always been with man. The principle of death and decay is a part of the whole creation. Pelagius was rightly denounced by the early church, for which we should be thankful. According to Dr. Ross' beliefs, Jesus Christ would have eventually died anyhow, even if He had not been crucified.

Does the Bible teach that natural creation was not affected by Adam's sin? Not at all.

Romans 8:20-22. "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now." Corruption includes death, part of the futility to which creation was subjected, as in Gen. 3:17, "Cursed is the ground because of you. . . "

I Cor. 15:21-22. "For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive." The words show that Adam's sin resulted in physical death as well as spiritual death. We must not say Adam would have died physically, but not spiritually, had he not sinned. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was physical, not spiritual, so we know that Jesus died to redeem our fleshly bodies, and not only our spirits.

What about Noah's flood? In Gen. 9:11, God said to Noah, "Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." If the flood was only local, God did not keep His covenant, because there have been many floods since that time, killing lots of people. If the flood was local, why spend 90 years building an ark? Why not just move animals and believers to higher ground? The language of the account, besides passages like Psalm 104, require a global flood . . . destroying "all flesh".

Dr. Ross has many theories. Theories are not based upon absolute truth, and so are not absolutes. Many people think that scientists are completely unbiased and their theories based upon pure observation. This is not true. Einstein said, "But on principle, it is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe."

The Big Bang is no exception. Evolutionists have for a long time presented "proof" of the Big Bang, only to have their "proof" proven wrong. Their assumptions which "proved" the Big Bang, turned out not to prove it after all. This is what Einstein said, "It is the theory which decides what we can observe." The big bang theory is a belief, not science.

Astronomer Halton Arp wrote in "Nature" magazine, "Cosmology is unique in science in that it is a very large intellectual edifice based on very few facts." (Nature, Aug. 30, 1990 pp. 807-812). He means that cosmology is mainly constructed of guesswork and imagination. Dr. Ross would have us believe his edifice is nothing but fact. Dr. Arp says it has very little fact. I have to wonder if Dr. Ross has just accepted the Big Bang blindly, or if he knows the truth of the fragility of the theory and is willingly misleading people.

We are witnessing the collapse of the theories of evolution. The Big Bang hypothesis has largely changed, being modified into the inflation theory. In viewing the history of the universe and the earth, how can we really get to the truth? Since theories are only guesses, what we need is an eyewitness. Here is a good example of that fact. It is the case of Mr. Sakamoto and his family who were murdered by members of Aum Shinrikyo. For 5 years the police and Mr. Sakamoto's mother searched for the Sakamoto family. All theories and ideas were futile. Finally one of the murderers came forward and admitted the crime and showed the police where the bodies were buried. How could he do that? He, committed the crime; he was an eyewitness. Police theories would never have found the truth. It is the same in creation. In the matter of the theoretical Big Bang, who was there to witness it? It is only an assumption of the past. The only possible Eyewitness is the Creator. He really should be taken as seriously as the killer of the Sakamoto family. The police accepted the words of the killer and found the bodies. We might wonder why people will take the words of a killer, but not the words of the Creator God. The Big Bang is now a passing theory - or a passed theory. The cosmology was greatly changed with the discovery of the "great wall." We have material that shows that the Big Bang and other cosmologies depending on evolution are only guess work and assumptions. Truth is usually in the minority rather than the majority. We see that in the record of Noah. Noah believed God and built an ark to save his family and himself. After the flood Noah and his family were then in the majority. This is God's record of the event. We must seek truth and receive God's Word, regardless of men's opinions.

Astronomers, and other leading scientists, are bringing devastating evidence against the Big Bang. As I check the details of the Eyewitness's report, I find it (the Bible) to be rational, with sufficient evidence. For example, in the Genesis account, on day three the earth dried up quickly, at least within one day. One very strong evidence of that is taken from research done on polonium halos in basement granite. The explanation is tedious, but please hear it.

When radioactive material decays within a solid, the escaping alpha particles burns or etches the record of that escape in that material. In a solid, it is a sphere, but when sliced and examined, it looks like a halo. There are three kinds of polonium halos: Po 210 (half life 138 days), Po 214 (half life 0.000146 sec.) and Po 218 (half life 3 1/2 min.) Since magma is not yet solid, no radiometric halo can form in magma. This means that the Po 218, having a half-life of only 3 1/2 minutes, had to be in the granite when it was formed. Therefore the granite must have been formed within 3 minutes. These polonium isotopes are the daughter products of Uranium, a radioactive material which decays through a chain of elements, finally to lead. Along the chain of decay it passes through the three stages of polonium mentioned above. However, there are many instances where polonium halos have been found with no uranium nearby, and no marks of uranium having been present. The presence of these Po 218 halos independent of the uranium decay chain is evidence that a primordial liquid cooled and crystallized almost instantaneously to form the earth's granites. This is in sharp disagreement with the evolutionary position which states that the earth cooled down from a molten condition over a long period of time. Polonium halos are mute evidence that the earth's basement rocks were formed suddenly. There was no need for long ages, not even one whole day.

In coalized wood Dr. Gentry found many specimens of polonium in the presence of uranium, not apart from uranium as he did in granite.

The Lord raises the question, "Where were you when the earth was formed?" (Job 38:4-7). Was Dr. Ross, or any other scientist, there when the earth was formed? No? Then they are all guessing. Just guessing. It is absurd for men to make dogmatic statements about how things were billions of years ago. Even many Christians swallow such atheism-based nonsense. Evolutionists begin with an a priori assumption of long ages uniformitarianism, renounce young earth creationists as unscientific, devise some plausible explanation, and then point out that the present condition agrees with their explanation. Sadly, they do not understand that they are guilty of circular reasoning. God, the Creator Himself, was the Eyewitness. Only God was there, and He, alone, knows what happened. Fortunately for us, He gave us a record of what happened. Unfortunately, men like Dr. Ross choose not to believe it. Carbon 14 is well known for age dating. Its weakness is that it can only date things up to several thousand years old. So other methods were developed. The potassium to argon decay test has been widely touted as the most accurate dealing with long ages. The problem is that no one knows that the universe is as old as dates given by this method. Some tests on known ages of rocks show that this method cannot be trusted at all. Consider some Hawaiian lava rocks.

The Journal of Geophysical Research, volume 73, July 15, 1968, reported that lava rocks formed in 1800 and 1801 in Hawaii were dated by a potassium-argon method and showed an age of formation of 160 million years to 3 billion years. This shows a tremendous discrepancy between the actual age and the age as determined by a radiometric dating method. Another example of erroneous dating is reported in Science, volume 162, October 11, 1968. Volcanic rocks known to be less than 200 years old were dated by a radiometric dating method and showed ages of 12 to 21 million years, showing that the reliability of these dating methods is in question when tested against materials with a known origin. We must remember that these same dating techniques are one scientists believe give a positive proof of the earth being billions of years old. The following is a list of lava rock samples known to be less than 200 years old, showing the test results using the potassium-argon method.

1. 160,000,000 years
2. 791,000,000 years
3. 960,000,000 years
4. 1,500,000,000 years
5. 1,580,000,000 years
6. 2,040,000,000 years
7. 2,470,000,000 years
8. 2,960,000,000 years

Would you rest your faith in the age of the earth upon such methods rather than the revealed word of God?

It is objected that recently formed rocks give erroneous dates. How do they know that any rocks give correct dates? About 90% of all radiometric dating tests are thrown out because they do not give the "correct" dates according to the theory of evolution. If the dates of these rocks were not known they would adopt a method of averaging the dates, and accept the dates as being valid. The Grand Canyon is often given as great proof of evolution and long ages. The evidence is otherwise. The eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the subsequent events give us some very important data relative to the formation of canyons. At the time of the eruption the river was dammed up creating a large lake. About three years later there was a smaller eruption creating a mud flow which burst the dam on the river. Down river sediment from the eruption had been washed in and settled out. After three years it was all settled and began to harden. However, when the dam burst, a path was quickly cut through this relatively new sediment. The result of this was to create what some call a "mini Grand Canyon" (about 1/40 the size of the Grand Canyon). Many features look remarkably like the Grand Canyon. So much so that some scientists are questioning the necessity of long ages to create the Grand Canyon. How long did it take to cut the mini Grand Canyon? About three hours. Probably a few days to a few weeks would have been enough to cut out the Grand Canyon had there been a similar situation. There is strong evidence that such a condition did exist.

If you will look at Appendix II you will see that Dr. Ross' model is almost identical to that of atheistic evolution and theistic evolution, except he has God involved just a bit more than theistic evolutionists. I return to the matter of the revelation of an eyewitness.

1. The record must be clear, objective and easily understood. In Genesis the Eyewitness did not show us everything about the universe, but what is written is true.

2. The testimony must be such that it can be verified.

3. If symbols are used the text or context will show clearly that it is symbolic. We must not add to the Record.

Throughout history, people misunderstood and believed contemporary science to be truth, as Dr. Ross does. However, science is and has always been biased by the dominating philosophy or world view of the time. When those views changed, so did the scientific theories.

Before Magellan people thought the Bible taught the earth was flat. The church at that time was strongly influenced by Greek and Roman philosophy. So, it was not the Bible that taught the earth was flat, but the dominating philosophy of the time. The Bible, in fact, teaches the earth is a sphere. Pro. 8:27, Isaiah 40:22. The church also took up the philosophy of geocentricism from Plato and Aristotle. We still suffer from that mistake. Christianity has suffered much damage from teaching as Bible the philosophies of the world. Every time the church falls for some world philosophy we get hurt. We can, we must avoid this today.

Look at other wrong ideas in the past. 1. Ptolemy. In Almagest he wrote "the earth was the center of the universe and not moveable." Intellectuals of the time accepted this explanation until Copernicus. The Roman Catholic Church compromised with this view, making it Catholic dogma. When Galileo rejected this view, the church court labeled him a heretic, but he insisted he said nothing different to that in the Bible. (See "Conflict Between Science and Religion" by White.) In Job 38:12-15 the earth's rotation is mentioned.

2. Linneus. When Linneus classified living things the secular mind misled the church. Creatures were classified by phyla, family, genera, species and other taxinomical units, and species were identified as a "kind" as written in Genesis ch. 1. So he taught that each species is fixed and has not changed since creation. The Anglican Church accepted this view and it became church dogma. Darwin learned this at Cambridge University. When he went to the Galapagos Islands he found variations from island to island. He concluded the various forms came from a common ancestor. Following this thought, he assumed that given enough time amoeba could become humans. Now we know that what Darwin saw was only a minor variation which some call, "micro evolution." Genesis ch. 1 says all life was created "after it kind." There is variation within the kind, not real evolution.

3. Darwin. When Darwin's view was popularized, many Christians compromised with this view. This world view has become the last religion for the final age of the world. Now the Big Bang theory is collapsing as is shown by many scientists. Sir Fred Hoyle, a famous astrophysicist, has renounced it. He says if there were a Big Bang, there would be a quantity of hydrogen, a little helium and a smattering of a few other gases, and after that, "a dull-as-ditch water expansion." Of course, if there had been such an explosion, the matter would still be speeding through space, and there is no law in physics that can produce stars and planets out of that. We should not let Dr. Ross, or anyone else, deceive us by assuring us he knows what is happening hundreds of light years away.

Dr. Ross gives a very impressive presentation and if we do not hold strongly to the Word of God we may be deceived. II Cor. 11:13-15 gives a timely warning for our day. "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds." Brothers and Sisters, although this is hard to say, I beg you to hear it. Dr. Ross is doing the work of Satan.

The Big Bang is in the future, not in the past! "But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (II Peter 3:7).

Even if we cannot find all the answers to scientific questions, we should not accept ideas different to the clear teachings of the Bible. We need to wait until science catches up to the Bible. Hear the words of II Timothy 3:16-17.

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

Dr. Ross says that his presentation is very effective in reaching people with the Gospel, but that young earth creationists are not effective. We have found in our church that as we present the Gospel from the standpoint of a young earth, Biblical, direct creation, people are convinced and trust Jesus and follow Him. In our church about 65% of the members have been reached through young earth, Biblical creation. We do not need to compromise to preach the Gospel...

In closing I give a quote from Josh McDowell. "The message of the Bible is clear for those who will read it and seek to find out its meaning. The problem comes when people bring their preconceived notions to the Bible and attempt to make the Word fit their ideas. This is not the fault of the Bible, but of the persons who force the Bible to say what they want it to say." (Creation and Time by Van Bebber/Taylor, p. 58).

(Appendices Omitted)

References:

Young-Earth Creationism vs. Old-Earth Creationism

http://web.fou.telenor.no/fou/ttolge/mnvit/hayama/

Ole J. Forgen Anfindsen's Faith and Science Page

http://web.fou.telenor.no/fou/ttolge/mnvit/

December 16, 1997.

I will be praying for your confrontation with Hugh Ross. He needs to meet Jesus. Perhaps, since his "conversion" he has been surrounded by too many Pharisees who "err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God." May the Lord give you great wisdom to season your words with salt, prophetic power to draw attention to God rather than you, and a heart of compassion for his soul. In some ways Mr. Ross is worse than a Simon the sorcerer for the huge impact of deception he has made on the Christian church at large. On the other hand, it could very well be in God's providence that Mr. Ross is simply a fulfillment of God's principle in 2 Thes. 2:10b-12. I'll be praying that God will fill you with His Spirit and mighty weapons to pull down strongholds and bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Henry Morris-
Many atheistic astronomers do not believe in big bang.
Hugh says new species is new creation
Romans 5 and I Cor 15 death by sin.
Would Adam have died anyway if he had not sinned?
Why did Christ die physically not just spiritually?

Ray Comfort- tell me what you think a person needs to do to be saved.
What is sin? Act 28:23 jump to law w/o offense. Law speaks to man's intellect and then his conscience by the law.
Make it personal, "I had an intellectual knowledge but had not come through the right door. By the law is the knowledge of sin." Romans 3:20. Rom. 7:7 "Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet."
Like rich young ruler. Keeps the moral part of the law- man to man but not right relation with God.

I called Duane Gish to ask his advice on the upcoming Hugh Ross debate. Here are his comments:
Tell the audience that Hugh accepts the Big Bang created to get God out. -produced hydrogen and helium- all stars, planets, man came from this gas- "We are the burnt out embers of hydrogen gas." "Anybody with a good pair of binoculars can run outside and see stars forming." Hugh said to Duane Gish. Matter is moving outward from this area. "The physics of star formation is more simple that raindrop formation." This is absurd! Gravitational force is less than gas pressure pushing out by 50 to 1. "Some scientists have established that there are 10 dimensions." "10 x -103"

"4th day stars became visible." No! they were created!
"All the lights went on at the same time." Why would this be?

I just couldn't sleep at night regarding your Creation debate with Hugh Ross. I thought I had addressed everything. Then I woke up with a few more important points for you.

1. Hugh Ross insists that the sun existed from day one of creation week. But the Bible says that God created light on Day One then created separate lights on day four (sun, moon, stars). If Hugh Ross is right then the light God created in Day One lighting up the earth is redundant. This is further complicated by the fact that God divided the light from the darkness, just as he divided the land from the water. He is fully capable of doing this without even the existence of the sun, moon or stars. He did not created the sun, moon, and stars to DIVIDE the light from darkness but rather to GOVERN the days, years and seasons. The light God created was on the earth, it did not need to shine through the clouds to get it there. Hugh Ross theology would require two DIFFERENT light sources for Day one and forward.

2. More on Hugh Ross's statement of NO alteration of the physics on the earth. How about Moses turning the wooden rod into a living snake miracle?

3. Hugh Ross quotes Lev 25 that the Sabbath Year is a parable. But even if this were true, in a parable or analogy, you are comparing something to a known reference point. In this case the comparison is to a day or Sabbath Day, meaning the reader must understand what a day is in order to even be able to make the comparison. But according to Hugh Ross, you can't know what a day is or its duration. So, my question for Hugh Ross is WHEN DOES A DAY BECOME A DAY AND HOW WOULD YOU KNOW IT? IF YOU DON'T WHAT A DAY IS, THEN HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHAT A YEAR IS? HUGH ROSS IS BASICALLY SAYING THAT GOD IS TELLING MAN THAT HE HAS NO WAY OF TELLING TIME. God gives the sun, moon and stars to govern time for man, and to know how long to work (6 days), how long to rest (Sabbath Day), when to start work again (First Day) of the next week cycle, while simultaneously telling man he has no way of determining the length of a day in order to obey God's commands? This is most unfortunate for the Jews who must perform a daily sacrifice and evening oblation without a clue when to do it. Too bad for Daniel in his prayer to the Lord inquiring about the end of 70 years of captivity prophesied by Jeremiah who would have no ability whatsoever to determine the length of a year, let alone 70 years. God issues this curse through Moses then leaves his people clueless what a year is. Daniel predicts the number of years until the Messiah is cut off. Why would God do this if Daniel had no idea what a year was? (Remember you can't know what a year is if you don't know what a day is!) Too bad for the Jews in Egypt who were to come out of Egypt in the number of years given to Abraham but not know what a year is? Poor Ezekiel who must lie on his side a day for a year without a clue how long a day is? Jesus Christ expected his people to know the day of his visitation. He further tells them that he will be in the grave three days and three nights. But since a day can be any duration, he could be there for 3 million years and no one could ever challenge his resurrection. No one could ever know the difference.

It is amazing to me that Hugh Ross states that there is no way to tell time on the earth because we don't know what a day is or how long it is, yet he insists that we can measure time in the Universe in order to determine when the Big Bang Occurred, when time began. How is it possible to measure time in his universe while it is simultaneously impossible to measure it on the earth? We know what a day is in the Universe, but do not know what a day is on the earth? How more contradictory can you get?

Hugh Ross further maintains that he knows the time it took starlight to get to the earth. But time space and matter were created at the same time. Therefore the light from the stars is not bound by time in God's creative act outside of time. (Remember God can work outside of time even after He created and began time. If Adam, created only 2 days later is expected to see the light from the stars, then God did not create the stars, then expect Adam to wait for the light to get there. If the light from the stars is the prisoner of time then light from them still would not have arrived so that we could see it if each Creation day is even 1,000 years in duration.

4. If Noah's Flood according to Hugh Ross is LOCAL then the curse is LOCAL. We should then all move to Antarctica to join Hugh Ross' penguins and the rest of mankind that escaped Noah's Flood...the reset of Adams' descendants that are not descendants of Ham, Shem or Japheth, so that we too can live in Paradise (everywhere outside of Mesopotamia) where the whole earth does not groan for Christ's return.

James Sundquist

Other References to Hugh Ross: Letter from Lambert Dolphin with links.

May 23, 2001