For those of you who are interested in Biblical Creationism, I checked out two interesting links this morning. Initially, I read the current issue of Acts & Facts. As always, there are a number of significant articles that I would recommend for you to read. Because of my interest in Biblical Creationism, the lead article, “Capitulating on Creation: Changing the truth of God into a lie” by Lawrence Ford, is a challenge to our generation since many evangelical leaders have compromised the literal and historical fabric of Genesis 1-2.

Perhaps, the most helpful anti-evolutionary website is Dave Coppedge’s Creation-Evolution Headlines. I came across this website almost a year ago and, because of its substance, added it to my RSS feed list. When I had the privilege of getting to know Dave on a white-water rafting trip in late June (for more information on Dave, go here and here), he was one of our leaders and displayed an impressive knowledge of science and most specifically about Saturn. You do not want to miss today’s headline: “Vice Presidential Candidates: You Have a Choice.”

If you have read my blog before, you realize that I am not a Barack Obama supporter (for my views, click here, here and here). As I watched the last portion of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, I thought to myself the Democrats have portrayed Obama as something of a “Messianic” figure. However, I was not alone in my thoughts for Jon Stewart of Comedy Central apparently had the same thoughts (btw, I have rarely seen excerpts from his program). Though the five minute video has a few crude parts to it, it is worth a good laugh. To watch the video, go to
Barack Obama: He Completes Us.

(HT: Michele McGinty)

If your summer has been like mine, I have experienced a gratifying and full summer. Nevertheless, life presses on. With the beginning of the fall semester on August 25, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary will begin its thirty-third year of operation. With the inception of this fall semester, I will begin my twenty-sixth year of teaching at DBTS. From my perspective, one of the great blessings of teaching at DBTS is that our faculty has been very stable. I look forward to the challenges that this academic year will bring.

If you are scheduled to take one of my fall semester classes at DBTS or are interested in seeing what the course requirements are for a seminary class, the course requirements for my class are now available. If you are taking Pentateuch, click here; Elementary Hebrew, here; or Rapid Hebrew Reading, click here for the ThM program and here for the MDiv.

Dating back to my days in seminary, I have been taught and used the water vapor canopy as a model, not as explicit biblical teaching, to explain some aspects of life in the antediluvian world. One of the key issues relates to where did enough water in the earth’s atmosphere come from so that it could rain for forty days and forty nights producing such a global flood that the highest mountains were covered with 20 to 23 feet of water (Gen 7:19-20). To state this issue another way, where did all the water come from in the Noachian Deluge when God opened “the windows of heaven” in Genesis 7:11? The water vapor canopy provides an explanation as to how so much precipitation was in the earth’s atmosphere. But this model also has some inherent difficulties. I was faced with some of these difficulties while writing part one of my framework critique. In doing my research for this article, I did some ancillary reading that raised some additional questions about the viability of the vapor canopy. This issue was brought before me again on my recent white water rafting trip as we had some further discussions about this model. For example, if a vapor canopy has more than 20 inches of water, the greenhouse effect on the earth’s surface would be so great that life would not be sustainable. However, if the vapor canopy only has 20 inches of water, then its value for storing water for the Noachian Deluge seems to be negated. Though the vapor canopy is only a model that explains the environment in the antediluvian world, the issue relates to whether this is the best model. To read an introductory article that lays out some of the issues and presents some problems for the vapor canopy, read
Noah’s Flood - Where did the water come from?” For a more detailed article, read John Woodmorappe’s “Hypercanes: Rainfall Generators During the Flood.”

As Congress continues to use the energy crisis to advance each parties political agenda, Americans are being financially slain at the pump. In yesterdays Wall Street Journal, Joseph Petrowski’s opinion piece reflects on the current stalemate in Congress.

As president of Gulf Oil, New England’s largest independent petroleum company, and as someone who has spent his life in and around energy markets, I find the tone and substance of the current debate about our energy policy to be profoundly disappointing.

Partisan sides are using a serious crisis to advance political agendas, create political attack sound bites, and launch hearings to “expose” the culprit. Pick your favorite: speculators, Big Oil, environmentalists, China, India, etc.

To continue reading this article go to “A Bipartisan Fix for the Oil Crisis.”

Friends, we need to be proactive in our fight against Congress’ bureaucracy. A step in the right direction is for you to sign the American Solutions’ “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less” petition. Let me urge you to sign this petition and then send it along to others. The only way to communicate a message that something needs to change is to get Americans to act corporately. As of this morning, 1,314,995 people have signed this petition, but this is not enough to get most of these derelict Congressmen to do something. To sign the petition, click here (BTW, on the same page, you can go to a designated link to see if your Congressmen support this petition).

Many members of Congress remain in an apathetic stupor about doing anything to offset the rising cost of oil. In an interesting article yesterday, Environment News Service, reports that public sentiment has shifted in favor of greater exploration (such as mining and drilling) into what the United States can do to correct growing energy turmoil:

As gas prices soar to record highs across the United States, public support for more energy exploration is also rising, according to a new public opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

A few months ago, fewer Americans gave a high priority to energy exploration, and more favored conservation. But the survey, conducted June 18-29 among 2,004 adults, found that an increasing proportion says developing new sources of energy - rather than protecting the environment - is the more important national priority.

Nearly half of those polled (47 percent) now rates energy exploration as the more important priority, up from 35 percent in February.

The proportion saying it is more important to increase energy conservation and regulation has declined by 10 points (from 55 percent to 45 percent).

The poll also finds that half of the Americans surveyed now support drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, up from 42 percent in February.

To continue reading, go to “Pain at the Pump Raises Support for Domestic Drilling.”

What can we do to correct this growing problem? We need to be more politically aggressive with our votes. If your Congressmen does not support drilling for oil, you need to cast a vote against him with the next election (to see who has signed this petition, go here). In addition, you must sign the American Solutions’ “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less” petition. As of this afternoon, this petition now has 1,307,340 signatures. Click here to sign this petition.

“Let’s Go Boatin’” still rings in my ear; and I can still vividly remember the first time I heard Tom Vail’s call when we launched our trip from Lee’s Ferry in the Marble Canyon on June 23rd (pictured above, the Vermilion Cliffs are in front of us). Though it has been over a week since I have returned from our 8-day/7-night white water rafting trip on Colorado River, Tom’s typical call to get on the boats is permanently etched in my mind. In a rough analogous way to Pavlov’s dog, Tom’s call moved us to “salivate” for boarding our boats to begin another informative aspect of our white water rafting trip down 187 miles of the Colorado River, starting at Lee’s Ferry in Marble Canyon and concluding at Whitmore Wash in the Grand Canyon. While I could write many posts about this valuable trip, I plan to highlight some key items from our trip in this post and a few subsequent posts.

Canyon Ministries in cooperation with Answers in Genesis, through the gracious gifts of donors, gave scholarship to 23 College and Seminary professors. Since the aim of this trip was to influence professors, it was described as the “2008 Grand Canyon Christian Scholars’ Trip.” More specifically, the purpose of the trip was to influence College and Seminary professors, who seemingly had more post-graduate degrees than Carter has liver pills, that the geological evidence in the Grand Canyon is best explained as a result of the universal flood in Noah’s lifetime. Besides the 23 professors, 5 additional scholars came on the trip to provide biblical and geological discussions. The following is a picture of our august body after the trip.

The following picture is of the team of five instructors who gave us a biblical and geological education on this trip. Pictured from left to right are David Coppedge (NASA’s team lead system administrator for the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena), Bill Barrick (Old Testament Professor at The Master’s Seminary), Andrew Snelling (Geologist par excellence, Director of Research with AIG-US), Tom Vail (director of Canyon Ministries; my impression from some river rafters is that Tom is something of a legend among river rafter), and Terry Mortenson (lecturer & researcher with AIG). All of these men are experts in their fields.

The expertise that these five men brought to the trip was invaluable. Since “let’s go boatin’” is permanently etched in my mind, I thought it appropriate to use this as a title for this series of posts. Here is a picture of Tom leading the way down the Colorado River.

Though I cannot forget Tom giving candid directions laced with humor, articulating geological insight about the canyon on a raft, climbing the canyon like a seasoned mountain goat, testifying how God in his sovereign grace saved him, and instructing how Noah’s flood provides the best explanation for the rock formations in the Grand Canyon, what I remember most vividly is “Let’s Go Boatin’” (for some other blogs describing aspects of our trip, click here for Bill Barrick’s blog, here and here for Del Tackett’s). With my next few posts, I will share with your a few of the thrills of white water rafting, geological data and theological observations.

Since I returned home late last Sunday night from my 8-Day Grand Canyon River Trip, I am just getting caught up on some reading since I had access neither to the internet nor to a cell phone. In scanning over some blogs that I normally read, I found a “fair and balanced” article on the upcoming presidential elections.

Many people are just waking up to the fact that this is an election year. John Mark Reynolds has posted an article that looks at the strengths and weaknesses of both presidential candidates. In the end, Reynolds notes that there are three areas where the next president will have an impact: the energy issue, judicial appointments and the war in Iraq. Though Reynolds clearly notes that McCain is not the conservative ideal, he indicates that he is voting for McCain because of the war and the courts. Because of the gravity of this election year, you will profit by reading “If You Are Just Starting To Think About This Election.”

“Politically speaking, Susan Speakman is a different kind of evangelical,” writes John M. Broder of the The New York Times. “Mrs. Speakman, 59, a pastor and educator at Bethany Presbyterian Church in Bridgeville, Pa., an activist evangelical church southwest of Pittsburgh, backs Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race. Along with her 23-year-old son, Stephen, she supports Mr. Obama because of his stands on the Iraq war and matters of social justice. The two of them plan to spread the word in their community and beyond.” This female church leader “is one of thousands of evangelical Christians and so-called faith voters whom the Obama campaign is recruiting in a major effort to connect with a part of the electorate that accounts for an estimated quarter of the voting population and helped elect George W. Bush president twice.” To find out more about Obama’s strategy and appeal to evangelical leaders, continue reading Obama Courting Evangelicals Once Loyal to Bush - NYTimes.com.

However, before evangelical Christians are seduced by Obama, they need to consider that his moral positions are antithetical to a Christian ethic. For example, they need to consider that Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, is committed to appointing activist judges and approves the formal sanction of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Further, they should ask why Hamas is hoping for an Obama victory.

Though some so-called Evangelicals are concerned about “social justice,” what has happened to moral justice? For example, what has happened to moral justice for those created in the divine image but cannot articulate they want justice. I am referring to those unborn children who will be murdered through the medical practice of partial-birth abortion (for some basic biblical information on abortion, see my concise paper “A Biblical Understanding of Abortion“). Obama’s clearly articulated support for partial-birth abortion should wave a huge red flag for anyone with a biblical ethic. Every Christian with any moral fiber needs to listen to Obama’s unambiguous support for partial-birth abortion in his 2007 address to Planned Parenthood. To listen to his speech, go to Barack Obama at Planned Parenthood 2007. This address speaks volumes. May God help God-fearing people to use biblical discernment in the upcoming election.

Before leaving on my 8-day Grand Canyon river trip, I checked the American Solutions’ website; and, as of 5:25 AM, 1,086,047 people have signed the “Drill Now. Drill Here. Pay Less” petition. Since my last post at 9:48 PM last evening, this means that 4,956 people in a little less than six hours have signed this petition. Hopefully, the swelling number of people signing the petition will put some pressure on Congress. And, if not, we need to vote some of these Congressmen out of office. To sign the petition, click here.

If you do not see the issues clearly, you need to listen to Newt Gingrich discuss three ways to solve America’s energy solutions (this is less than 4 minutes): “Y3 Ways to Lower Gas Prices.”