I believe the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and that the Bible doesn’t say much one way or the other about biological evolution. I believe that young-Earth creationism is neither necessary Biblically nor valid scientifically.
Ken Ham is president of Answers in Genesis, and believes the Bible requires an approximately 6000-year old Earth and that most fossils were deposited during Noah’s flood. He believes that to accept an old Earth is a compromise of Biblical truth.
But we are in agreement on something that is far more important than the age of the Earth or the extent of Noah’s flood, and that is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ken Ham had a blog post yesterday (A Warning to the Contemporary Church) where he responded to a Christian critic whose testimony of how he came to be “born again” was rather ambiguous. Ham writes:
To me this kind of testimony is a warning to the contemporary church, as it appears to me this testimony involves some sort of experience or feelings. He is trying to come to God through experience, but what is missing? Not one verse of Scripture was quoted—not one. What also was missing were any mention of words like these: sin, repentance, salvation, faith, Jesus—the Son of God, grace, and belief.
There is no mention of Jesus—no doctrine of humanity (that man is fallen), and no doctrine of the Son (we can only come to God the Father through the Son).
…that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9)
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17)
“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” (John 3:36)
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40)
But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)
For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy 2:5)
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)
The gospel isn’t “God gave me peace when I listened to a song.” It is not a warm, fuzzy feeling.
The gospel is the good news that Christ died on the cross for our sins and that those who trust in Christ have a new relationship with God and will have eternal life in and with him for all eternity.
I don’t know where this critic, a professor of New Testament Language and Literature at a liberal arts college, stands before God; only God knows. I would expect a New Testament professor who professes to be a Christian to be able to give a clear statement of faith, and he didn’t. Ken Ham, on the other hand, gave a clear outline of the gospel.
Amen brother Ken Ham. Preach Christ and Christ alone as the way to God.
Grace and Peace
GeoChristian 
For full disclosure, you should link to the “professor of New Testament Language and Literature at a liberal arts college”‘s two responses on his blog within the main article.
(if the intention of this blog is to be partial, that is fine – do not feel obliged)
smile
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We recently heard a man speak for 40 minutes about his aid work to Macedonia.
The organisation of which he is head is called “Christian Response to Eastern Europe”.
There was no mention of Christ, no connection with the Church in that land & not a word of mention of The Lord in their magazine.
Can you imagine someone from the XYZ Football Supporters team writing a magazine, or giving a report that doesn’t mention the club? I can’t.
Now is the time to speak about Jesus (rather than our “church”) and remind people that God is still alive. He’s not 6000 years old or several miliion, he’s from outside time altogether.
Awesome. Like his creation.
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Boz:
I didn’t feel it was necessary because Ken Ham had links in his article.
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Snowgood:
You’re right. It is much easier to talk to people about “church” than about Jesus. Proclaiming church or missions or service or anything else is not proclaiming the gospel.
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Just to make it nice and easy, here is the link to the testimony given by Dr. McGrath with which Ken Ham takes issue: http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/04/parable-and-testimony.html
Frankly, I don’t see what Ham’s complaint is all about. Just to summarize the testimony, Dr. McGrath says that he had believed in God for as long as he could remember, but had drifted away into ambivalence, he heard some music which stirred him and started him wanting to know God better than he had, and that culminated in a church service after which he prayed something like-
“God, I don’t know what your way of living is, but mine isn’t working, so whatever your way is, I want to try it.”
Ham is looking for something completely different in a testimony than what McGrath is giving. Ham seems to want a theological description of McGrath’s conversion. McGrath is giving a personal recounting of the events.
Obviously, if Ham requires a theological discussion in a personal retelling of events, he will be disappointed. I can’t see any basis for condemning the personal retelling as deficient, though.
If you want to get really precise, McGrath’s writing wasn’t about his conversion, but rather about his rededication. That makes it all the more bizarre that Ham is searching for a theological description of salvation in McGrath’s writing.
McGrath wrote a personal experience description of his rededication. Ham condemned it for not being a theological depiction of salvation.
I think Ham was looking for any excuse for a topic for his column and is generating offense out of nothing.
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Pingback: Do Old Earthers and Young Earthers Agree on Anything? - Persevero!
Ken Ham just wrote a blog post about your blog post Geo! ROTFLOL!!!!! You’ve hit the big time! Check your blog stats to see if any traffic heads your way.
http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2010/11/03/do-old-earthers-and-young-earthers-agree-on-anything/
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Oh, just finished reading Ham’s post. Had to choke at this part though:
“understanding that I do not say, and have never said, that a person has to believe in a young earth to be a Christian”
Wow, does he really want people to go check the veracity of that statement in his old recordings? I’m sure he has some sort of way to explain away things he’s said. With the elections just over, I’ve spent a month listening to politicians do just that.
Still, I’m glad that he at least now says that. Better late than never.
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Webmonk,
Great point – I sure wish I had a recording of that “Back to Genesis” seminar put on by the ICR at Trinity Assembly of God (Lutherville, MD)in 1994, when I recall Ken Ham saying “If you believe the earth is old, then Jesus didn’t die for your sins!” To me, that’s pretty much saying that if you believe the earth is old, you’re not a Christian.
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Do old earthers and young earthers agree on anything? After following this and the related posts & comments, it struck me that there is one very crucial point that (many) old and young earthers do agree on, that makes it near impossible to have a fruitful dialog between the two sides. Many young earthers will not recognize that old earthers can and do hold the Bible in high regard, recognize it as the inspired Word of God, and submit to its authority.
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Oops. My last post should have said “there is one very crucial point that (many) old and young earthers do not agree on…”
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HI Carol,
I have some young earth friends and they respect and know the depth of my faith, and I don’t question theirs either. From my experience, I think things go wrong is when people with young earth views start going to these creation seminars, start reading young earth books, or listen to pastors like John MacArthur giving sermon series on “true Genesis” — that seems to inflame attitudes.
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As to Ken Ham, he now openly admits he will ban all those who disagree with him.
Clarity comes before agreement. Those in the fundamentalist community believe that censer ship is a viable way to protect the integrity of their ‘creationism’ is a sad statement, a statement that creationism
cannot stand the test of FREE INQUIRY as they nee…d to Ban all those who
disagree.
ken Ham’-the leading creationist’s Banning all those who disagree
speaks greatly about him, and Creationism, its a tacit way of saying
open discussion, debate is a THREAT.
As to clarity, creationism is not science, its religion, unique to
fundamentalist, and open discussion would quickly expose that fact, that
is why an open dialectic debate, is not allowed. That is so very
transparent,
Someone in Kentucky does not care about credibility, and is a coward..
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Hey kloth, frankly I don’t believe your claim that Ken is saying he would ban anyone who disagrees with him.
Do you have ANY source for that? What would he ban them from? On what would a person need to disagree with him in order to be “banned”?
Sorry, that sounds ridiculous on the face of it. I would need to see some pretty reliable evidence to accept that.
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Len kloth (#13):
I agree with Webmonk (#14). Banned from what? Give us a link.
On the other hand, I agree that there is a tendency among YECs to try to enforce the AiG/ICR party line in churches and Christian schools. But again, I’d like to see a reference so we all know what you are writing about.
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Regarding Ken Ham banning people, this is probably what Len kloth is referring to: Why Were They Banned?, by Ken Ham.
I’ll side with Ken Ham on this one. Any time AiG sets up a web site (blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) where comments can be posted, they get inundated with trash from the “free thinkers” out there. Ham gives a few examples. I can imagine that there is plenty of “You Christians are a bunch of #@%&! morons” sort of stuff. I know other Christian bloggers who have had to moderate comments or close comments altogether because of the spam that gets sent their way by Dawkinsites and other Christian-haters.
Then they complain that AiG doesn’t let them continue with their garbage.
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Just like all the Christians who vote spam on YouTube. It goes with the territory of online communication and in my experience (amazingly this is my 30th year online since sending my first email) banning does not work. Its better to engage with people which is why I find the lack of a comment feature on Ken’s blog worrisome. Would Jesus have a comment feature on his blog if he had one?
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Gordon (#17):
Thanks for your comment. I agree: dialog is better than banning when possible. I also agree that Christians could be guilty of the same thing at times. Still, I understand when a site has to cut off or severely moderate its comments.
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I dunno Gordon, the WWJD question doesn’t always work well everywhere, and this situation is one of them. For one thing, Jesus isn’t a YECer. :-D
But, I’m not sure you’re grasping the magnitude of the issue – have you ever seen a blitz orchestrated through 4chan or Anonymous? One can totally shut down any discussion on blogs, comment boards, Facebook, etc. Several thousand posts per day completely swamps any use of the forum. Take the Cooks Source kerfuffle as an example.
With YouTube, it doesn’t matter because no one goes to YouTube to learn anything from the comments. For an organization like AiG which wants to educate and encourage people with their site, having their comments sections completely and permanently swamped with comments destroys the whole point of comments.
When one is in that sort of situation, it’s just not possible to engage with the posters.
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O.k. – now I’m a little irritated. Ken Ham says he doesn’t say that you can’t be a Christian and believe the earth is old, and I suppose he has some cover with regard to what he said back in ’94 because he was with the ICR and AiG hadn’t formed yet.
But in his “Answers Update” that I received in the mail yesterday, there is a “CreationWise” comic showing a guy facing the Lord who is sweating profusely. In back of him are five men holding signs at their chests – the first says “Genesis is a Myth,” the second says “Biblical creation is a lie,” the third says “Millions and millions of years,” the fourth says “The Bible is wrong,” and the fifth says “Science says 6 days is false.” The guy facing the Lord says “Lord, I know you said ‘6 days’ in Genesis, but I chose to go with these guys and millions of years because they are REALLY smart… Nothing against you.”
If that doesn’t sound like Answers in Genesis says that old earth believers can’t be Christians, I don’t know what does other than to just come out and say it.
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Well I think Ham does believe you need to be a YEC to be a Christian. Its the logical outworking of his theology. I wrote recently that more and more churches are writing it into their statements of faith:
http://www.ecalpemos.org/2010/11/churches-with-creationism-in-their.html
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Tim, it’s standard politician-speak. He can claim that he isn’t TECHNICALLY saying that you have to be YEC to be Christian, just that particular guy in the picture rejected God with YEC beliefs.
Or, maybe that person is actually going to be let into heaven anyway and God is just making him sweat a bit before letting him in.
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Hi Tim (#12),
I am always glad to hear about Christians who are young earthers, but who can graciously accept the faith of old earthers. With that attitude both sides can learn from each other, even as they agree to disagree. I tried to be careful to qualify young earthers with “many” instead of “most” or “all” but I really don’t know what the percentages are. Sadly, as with many groups, the vocal ones are perceived as representative of the whole group.
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Yes, Ken Ham openly admits he will not allow open debate, questioning on his site. Yes, some came to offer nasty comments, but in his response he openly says that those who want open dialogue, debate can go elsewhere.
As to ‘young earth; it is so irrational it
chases away those who would otherwise hear their message.
for a more ‘ration’ scientific view, from a real scientist who is a Christian note;
http://www.prehistoricplanet.com/features/index.php?id=26
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Fundamentalist creationists elicit an extremely narrow definition of “science,” (redefining it for themselves) that allows them to summarily dismiss evolutionary theory as non-science. Their definition is the popular image of scientists performing repeatable experiments in a controlled lab setting. (While this is how some scientists work,) their definition disqualifies the well-established fields of astronomy, archaeology, paleontology, geology, epidemiology, climatology, linguistics, and as said before-forensics, and a WHOLE HOST of other historical sciences, including history itself. In short, fundamentalists believe that any statement about the past is no better than a guess, makes no allowance for methodological or evidentiary considerations that might render one “guess” better than another. This is ignorance.
Creationism is religion. And their disdain for historical science is matched by gross misrepresentation of the scientific method. This dismissive attitude might be apt if evolution was “just a hypothesis,” but in fact a theory is much stronger than a hypothesis, Dental theory, gravity theory, etc, etc etc, and requires more in the way of “disproof”-falsification. One wonders why fundamentalists don’t protest juries who convict based on forensics, or protests the theory of gravitation, germ theory of disease, atomic theory of matter; this clearly shows disdain for ALL OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTIST WHICH THEY CALL ‘EVOLUTIONEST.’ Fundamentalism is indeed a prescription for anti-education, and this willful ignorance is why people mock Hovind, Ham, and Cameron, as they have clearly earned it.
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