The Cross of Freedom

God left his signature all over the creation. Science has found a number of things that either can’t be explained by the laws of physics or that happened in such a manner as to be unlikely to have happened by accident. Those who believe in God know who caused these things to occur. Those who don’t are still searching.

The main debate related to our origins is whether the universe and all that is in it, including life, came into being on its own or was put here on purpose. Over time, science has found that there has not been enough time for all we see to have happened on its own.  This is why a discussion of the origins of the universe and life requires us to look at both science and the Bible.  In 1951, Pope Pius XII said, “True science to an ever-increasing degree discovers God as though God were waiting behind each closed door opened by science.” Each time science advances it comes closer to the Bible, which has never changed.  This is pretty amazing, considering that the Bible was written thousands of years before all of the archaeological finds that confirm it.  Here are some examples of science catching up with Scripture:

• Science has generally considered three main concepts for our universe: Steady state, oscillating, and expanding. Based on evidence and advances in science, the steady state and oscillating theories have been found to have issues and have largely been dismissed. Science now believes, again due to evidence, that the universe is steadily expanding and will continue to do so. Biblical scholars centuries ago interpreted the Bible as describing an expanding universe.
• Oceanographers once believed that the origin of the oceans was condensation from a primeval cloud that surrounded the Earth. It was later determined that even a cloud that surrounded the entire earth was capable of containing only a fraction of the water in Earth's oceans. It is now believed that the water in the oceans came from the Earth itself. It has been shown that molten rock can contain about 5% of its weight as dissolved water, which would emerge from the earth as steam.  This is a large enough amount of moisture to account for the oceans.  The Bible has always said that the oceans came up from the Earth as a mist.
• In the mid-1800s, Darwin published his "On the Origin of Species", making public his theory that there was a gradual evolution from the first single-celled life to the complexity and abundance of life we see today.  For years, biologists believed that life was the result of random associations of molecules that, through trial and error, eventually grew to become amino acids and then life itself.  Later, when the calculations were actually performed, it was determined that the time required for this was longer than the life of the universe itself.  Remember, this was just to reach single-celled life.  And even to get that far required that we ignore the laws of entropy.  Most scientists today recognize, and have stated, that life could not have appeared on earth this way.  They now believe that life must have been placed here.  The biblical version has always been that life was placed here.
• British archaeologist John Garstang disagreed vigorously with the biblical date for Joshua's conquest of Canaan. During excavations at Hazor between 1955 and 1968, the biblical date was scientifically confirmed.
• The passage of time was once considered to be absolute and fixed. It was later determined that the passage of time is not absolute, but is varied and fluid. Biblical scholars made it clear centuries ago that the time before Adam will appear illogical to us and that the time following Adam will appear normal. And, indeed, the timeline as established by archaeologists has come to agree with the timeline of the bible from the time of Adam forward.

Biblical sages warned us long ago that our perception of the events of the first six days of Genesis would be inconsistent with our understanding of nature for the time following Adam. The “rest” that occurred on the seventh day was not for God – he does not need to rest because he does not tire. On the seventh day God caused His newly-created universe to settle into the steady flow of time we experience today. Beginning with that first day of rest, the laws of nature function in a way that seems “normal” to us. The events prior to that, those of the creation, appear illogical to us. It was on the seventh day that God's calendar merged with ours.

It was said long ago that, if we are to gain any understanding of God, we must try to understand the science of His creation. As stated above, both the Bible and science indicate that our universe is expanding and will continue to do so until something, or someone, stops it from doing so.  Therefore, our discussions here will be with regard to an expanding universe.

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