Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
One of the things that just recently I've come across is people having doubt about the Bible record. And these are christians. And so, for example, I was talking to a friend and he's just finished reading a book by christians that are arguing, well, the flood wasn't worldwide, it was just in a local area and so forth.
And they talk about these ancient heathen documents such as the Gilmesh epic and so forth. And as I thought about this in another, just a little Bible study group I was with, folk were talking about, well, we can't really know the date of the Exodus. And I comment, well, hang on, we can know the date of the Exodus with reasonably accuracy.
And that said, I will know that when we were at Bible College, there were some views that it was in the 12th century and some in the 15th century BC and so forth. I said, well, the Bible says when the Exodus occurs. And if we look in the book of Kings, first book of Kings, chapter six, verse one, we read that it talks about building the temple, starting the building of the temple in Solomon's 4th year, and the Exodus was 479 years earlier.
And so I guess we have to know what the year was when Solomon built his temple. And again, just looking that up on wikipedia, you work it out what the 4th year be 967 BC according to the latest information. And so that would put the Exodus at 1446 BC.
And so it's interesting that these doubts are there. And of course, I hear so much too about christians that don't believe in creation, don't believe in a young earth, and going across the different forms of theistic evolution or gap theory and different other things just to get around it. What the Bible is saying.
And this, to me, one of the things that I think this is pointing to is it's distracting people away from the whole teaching of the Bible that God is going to put an end to sin. There's going to be an end to this earth. And really people have to, in their lives make a decision for God or not, that this life is just a temporary life.
It's just temporary now because sin has come in the original plan that God had in Eden for us to live eternally and so forth, was just totally upset by Satan coming in. And there's a whole lot of background there. And I think, of course, there's an excellent book that I think sums up this whole conflict issue, which is called The Great Controversy that was written by Ellen G. White many years ago as she looked back through history. And I think that some amazing insights that explain. I'd certainly recommend that book to listeners.
So it's called The Great controversy between Christ and Satan as a subtitle by Ellen G. White. And I'm sure you'll probably find free copies on the Internet if you just googled that somewhere as download.
But I think her explanation, a bit of a background to evil there, fits so well with and puts together the ideas from the Bible, the glimpses that we get between the battle between Christ and Satan as recorded in the Bible together with history down through the ages.
And I was listening to a talk by the philosopher mathematician David Belinsky for Princeton Uni, educated Princeton Uni there. And one of the points that he made was that unless there's a judgement, unless there is accountability to a higher power, then there's no reason why people should want to do good things.
And if they can get away with being selfish and doing just what they want and being bad, there's no real motive for being necessarily good. People, if they just act selfishly all the time, are going to want to hurt. If they're stronger, then why not just take from other people? If you can get away with it? And we know that many people do this legally through different routes these days.
Of course, we hear about scammers and all this sort of thing that is going on. And I think that when people have this view of evolution and so forth, it just takes away this whole concept of accountability to God, because we just evolved over millions of years. Well, things are going to continue on.
But I think there's evidence in the Bible that we can see that, no, there is a time limit for this. There is a time when we read in the book of Revelation, in John's book of Revelation, on the 14th chapter there, we read from verse 6, John had this vision. And in this vision he said, then I saw another angel flying in midst of heaven with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth.
And we note the gospel was the good news that God came as Jesus Christ and died on the cross to show us how terrible sin was and to take our place in terms of dying, because God doesn't want bad wickedness, and so he puts an end to it. And that's why people die, so they can't continue perpetrating evil all the time. But God didn't want us to die.
He didn't want Adam and eve to die. Of course, that's another big picture. To read the story in the beginning of Genesis there, how the trap that Satan set for God when God told Adam and Eve that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in other words, knowing about evil changes, don't eat from that tree because evil had already begun with Satan's rebellion in heaven, as the Bible explains also in the book of Revelation and in various parts of the Bible as well, it's revealed that.
And of course, when Eve spoke to the serpent in the tree and the serpent said, oh no, you won't die, when Eve believed Satan, that essentially was saying, well, God's a liar, when God said, you will die. And so this was a very difficult situation for God, but he loved us so much, of course, as we read in the Bible, right in the very first chapter one of Genesis, that humans are made in God's image and that of course, God had that plan then that he would die in our place. So that if we choose God, if we choose to do the right thing, God can now give us eternal life.
And of course, that was the good news of the eternal gospel which was to be preached to every nation, tribe, tongue and people. And the angel then said, after that, fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgement has come and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the fountains of waters. And so we have this link together that there is going to be a judgement, there's going to be an end to this planet.
As we read about, for example, in Peter, if we read in second Peter, second book of Peter, chapter three, Peter writes, 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 towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. And that's interesting, isn't it, that all should reach repentance.
In other words, turning away from the bad things that we're doing and saying to God, God, I want to be a good person. I want to be in your kingdom. I want to be on your side.
And it goes on in verse ten. 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 shall be burned up. And of course, we know that people have scoffed about these things in the past because remember, scoffers often scoff at the flood and the Bible.
And Peter writes about this too, talking about in the beginning of chapter three, that the scoffers deliberately ignore the fact that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago. That's creation. 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.
And by the same word, the heavens and the earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men. I thought it's very interesting that again we have. Peter reminds us now, hang on, the world was destroyed at one stage by a flood.
And this is again fascinating how, as I said earlier, that christians are talking about, well, maybe there wasn't really a global flood and this sort of thing, but I've been reading some articles in this other book that I mentioned that's just been recently published by Andrews University Press. Design and Catastrophe: 51 Scientists Explore Evidence in Nature. And there's quite a few chapters there on the evidence for the global flood.
There's one by Dr. Elaine Graham-Kennedy, and the title is Widespread Deposits: Evidence Consistent with the Biblical Flood. It's another chapter there by Dr.
Raul Esperante, Worldwide Occurrence of Persistent Sedimentary Layers. And again, when we look at the structure of the earth, there's just so much evidence for the global flood because these deposits that we find are on such an enormous scale.
They're worldwide of these sedimentary layers, uniform sedimentary layers with the same characteristics across the world. And I'll probably talk about that in more detail another time. But one of the things that fascinates me is that we talk about the numbers, the days is 1000 years and so forth.
And one of the things that has fascinated me in the Bible is the use of numbers in the Bible. And one of the other things is that we're made in God's image and we can understand numbers and mathematics. Now, when I went to uni, I was originally training to be a physicist, did physics and pure and applied maths.
It was later in my university career that I changed to chemistry and went on to do research and postgrad research in chemistry. But it's fascinating that mathematics and numbers come into so many things in nature. And there's a really fascinating article written by Dr. Robert Hoskin, whom I know quite well, that he wrote in the book that I edited called The God Factor: 50 Scientists and Academics Explain Why They Believe in God. And that was published by Harper Collins a few years ago now.
But I think there are some fascinating articles in this book. It's called, as I said, The God Factor: 50 Scientists and Academics Explain Why They Believe in God and entered by myself.
But Dr. Hoskin talks about mathematics and the role of mathematics in nature. And he talks about coming across the findings of Leonardo Fibonacci de Pisa.
And Fibonacci series of numbers provides, he said, a spiritual link between mathematics and science. And he goes on that Leonardo was born in 1175 AD in Pisa, in the Italian city there. And Fibonacci made a number of contributions to mathematics, including the Fibonacci series of numbers, which are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.
And how you get these is you simply add the last two numbers to get the next. So you start with one, and then the next number obviously, has to be one, because the number before one is zero. So you've got two ones. And so you add those two numbers together, and then you get two. And then the number before the two was the one, so one and two is three, and the number before the three was two, so two and three are five, and the number before the five was three, so three and five are eight, and the number before the eight was five, so five and eight are 13, and so forth. That's how these numbers are built up.
But there's amazing connection between these numbers and designs that we find in nature. For example, the series has been used to describe how, for example, rabbit populations expand, and the arrangements of petals on flowers, the structure of pineapples and pine cones. The Fibonacci spiral describes the shape of seashells on many plants.
The number of petals is a Fibonacci number. Buttercups have five lilies and iris have three. Some delphiniums have eight.
Corn marigolds have 13. These are all. Some asters have 21.
Daisies with 34, 55, or even 89 petals. And these are all Fibonacci numbers. It's amazing, these numbers, he says.
Further, if we take the Fibonacci numbers and divide each by the number before it, we will find the following series of numbers. One over one equals one, two over one equals two, three over two equals 1.55 over three, 1.66, and so forth. You get a whole series of numbers, and these numbers eventually converge on a value of around 1.6 180, which is the golden ratio often represented by the letter Phi, not PI, but Phi.
So the curves in the nautilus cell, the proportions of the classic buildings, such as the Parthenon in Athens, in Athens, et cetera, have their beauty and aesthetic appeal based on this golden ratio of one to 1.6 118. So these are often used in design, and so it's fascinating, these numbers that are associated in nature, the mathematics of nature.
And it's an amazing article there that Dr. Hoskin goes into. But one of the things he then goes on to say, he says, let us now have a look at the use of numbers in the Bible.
Why does the Bible consistently use certain numbers? And he says, consider the number 40. During the flood, it rained for 40 days and nights. Moses was 40 days on the Mount Nineveh, had 40 days to repent.
Christ was 40 days in the desert. Christ was 40 days on earth. After His resurrection, the children of Israel wandered for 40 years in their wilderness.
And it's interesting, he says, that writing of the Bible involved different people, number of different people, spanning thousands of years and many generations, and yet the same theme as evidence, the number 40 being used to indicate a time length of probation. And this is quite interesting. I thought, that he brings this up, a time length of probation.
So if we turn to Luke chapter four, we'd see where Jesus actually quoted from the book of Isaiah. And it's an interesting quote, and I'll just read from verse 16 and of Luke, chapter four. And it says, and he, that's Jesus, came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up.
And he went to the synagogue, as his custom was on the Sabbath day. And he stood up to read. And there was given him the book of the prophet Isaiah.
And he opened the book and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind and set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
And that to me is very interesting because he talks about the good news, proclaiming release to the captives and liberty to those who are oppressed. And that refers to the jubilee. The jubilee was, you read about in Leviticus.
There was, every 50th year there was release. The lamb was to return to the original owners and so forth. All debts were to be released.
And so if your family land had to be sold, you'd been taken. It had debts and gone in and had to sell the land and so forth. The land was returned to you, and all debts were forgiven.
At that 50 year period, slaves were freed. It was a wonderful time. It's a year of Jubilee, and we don't hear much about it this 50th year.
But one of the things, there are other periods in the Bible, too, that the 120 years that Noah preached before the flood and so forth. And one of the things that just stood out to me just recently was that I was doing some calculations on the date for creation from the data that we have in the Bible. And I just about fell over when I realised that Jesus crucifixion occurred as close as I can calculate to exactly 80 jubilees or 4000 years after creation of all.
Now, we can't know the exact date for creation from the Bible because we have the dates of the patriarchs and the dates that the patriarchs begat their first child or the child that's mentioned, and we can add those up. But when we have those particular ages and they talk about being 60 years old, we don't know whether they are 60 years old, they just turned 60 years or they were 60 years and a half or 60 years and three quarters. And so that introduces an error when you're accumulating, because if you have several half years, then adds up to one or two extra years in between.
And so mathematically the error is what we would say is plus 20 years. But when you add up the dates, it's so close to being exactly 4000 years or 80 jubilees between the date for creation and Jesus death on the cross. And if you want to cheque these, I do set out the calculation in the appendix of my book, evolution impossible.
Twelve reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on earth. In the appendix there, I set it out, but the, the text for you to look up and cheque for yourselves. Genesis chapter five.
Genesis chapter eleven, verses ten to 25 and verse 32. Genesis chapter twelve and verse four, and then first Kings chapter six and verse one, and then exodus chapter 1240 to 41, and Galatians chapter 316 to 17. And from these dates, of course, you'll need the date for Solomon's fourth year.
And I looked up Wikipedia and read some articles there for the date of Solomon's rule. And his fourth year would be 967 BC. And so using that you'll calculate a date for creation and there'll be an error of plus 20 years.
So that will give you a range. And so the date that I got was 3959 BC, plus 20 years. And you'll see that the date for the crucifixion fits roughly in the middle of that, 4000 years later.
So again, there seems to be a really strong correlation there. And so this also fits with the whole concept of the, when we think of Jesus and his death on the cross as the Passover lamb, when the folk came out, when the Israelites came out, of Egypt. They didn't have faith in God and they ended up wandering 40 years in the wilderness.
And so it wouldn't surprise me if the return, if God's judgement and the return of Jesus and we enter the promised land is 40 jubilees after the resurrection of Jesus and his death on the cross. So that makes me think that the second coming of Jesus and the judgement has got to be very soon. We can't know the exact date, we can't know the exact year.
But to me, from the mathematics of the Bible, it makes a whole lot of sense. And that's why this message is so important to get out to people and there's urgency to get it out because God is coming soon and people need to make that choice and be told that that opportunity is there to make that choice and be saved. Remember, Paul admonished it, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
That's in Romans 10:9. And remember also that Jesus himself said, and we can read about this in John, chapter six, verse 40. That's one of my favourite ones, where Jesus says, for this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.
So this is such an important message and I think the mathematics of the Bible really seems to support it. There's a lot more that we can talk about in terms of mathematics in the Bible and maybe I'll save that for another day.
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I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day.
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