Over and over again we are seeing the results of our culture’s rejection of God’s design. Does the Bible show us how to pray and order our choices to undercut the nearly ubiquitous pagan culture?
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Ministry notes
After presenting a paper on Babel as a 4,000-year political delusion at the Pre-Trib Study Group conference in December, I was asked by my local church pastor to fill in for him for four Sundays in January and February.
Since the theme this year in our local church was Christ Our Foundation, I thought that it would help some of our newer people to be reminded that prior to the Incarnation of the Son of God, He was present at Creation, the Fall, and all subsequent events. In a series entitled Revelational Foundations, I presented a condensed form of the Bible Framework truth-events of creation (both Genesis 1 and the 6th day recapitulation in Genesis 2), the Fall event in Genesis 3, and the rise and fall of the first civilization in Genesis 4–6. This is valuable revelation of the divine nature expressed in the Incarnation some 4,000 years later.
To further emphasize that the Bible makes clear that its revelation applies to the entire created environment surrounding us, I displayed various reading materials on subjects thought by most people who have been educated in the secular-dominated public-school classrooms to be religiously “neutral.” I laid out books that refuted the usual scientific claim that the earth is very old, the alleged claim that we have proof of such old age from radioactive decay measurements, and the belief that mathematics and God are not related. Here are some of the books:
Each of these books has a vital story for the enlightenment of Christians who have spent many years trying to be educated by secular-dominated elementary, high-school, and university culture.
The first book, The Genesis Flood, was a bomb shell in the conservative evangelical community in 1960. It took a chemist-turned-Old-Testament professor (Whitcomb) and a hydrodynamic-trained Civil Engineer (Morris) over 10 years to formulate the case to return to a literal, historic interpretation of Genesis 1–11.
Sadly, because most of the evangelical community had, for 160 years, uncritically accepted the claims of historic science concerning the age of the earth and had readjusted their interpretation of Genesis 1–11, no evangelical, dispensational publisher would touch the manuscript! Whitcomb and Morris insisted that the strategy of constantly accommodating the Genesis text to whatever happened to be the latest pontification of historic science, had done nothing to defend the Bible.
They decided to follow a radically different strategy. They started with submitting to the authority of Scripture and then began to fashion historical science to fit Scripture. When Dr. Rousas Rushdoony, a leader in the theonomic community, read the manuscript, he realized the significance of what Whitcomb and Morris had done and convinced the Presbyterian Publishing Company to publish it.
The second book, Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, was the first million-dollar research project designed by scientists who worked within the creationist community that had resulted from Whitcomb and Morris’ earlier pioneering work.
Whereas The Genesis Flood had focused on reinterpreting the observed geological strata, this project focused on the methodology used to assign dates to the geological evidence. Taking some years to complete this research project revealed that many assumptions of the radioisotope methods were unjustified and produced widely varying dates of specific geological samples.
The third book, Mathematics: Is God Silent? was written by a math teacher to middle-school students. He was troubled by students who saw no purpose in studying math and by other Christian math teachers who denied that biblical revelation had any connection to mathematics.
The first half of this book discusses how mankind has used mathematics to advance civilization and how in particular the early scientists in Europe operated within a worldview that linked mathematics to their physical environment and deepened their appreciation of God. The second half of Nickel’s book delves into the objectives and pedagogy of teaching mathematics such that students grasp the overall structure of math. Within the last few years Nickel has completed a series of books that present the details of a complete math curriculum for middle-school students.
A dear friend of mine recently wrote me: “As a bit of a side note, have you seen the Dance of Number curriculum that James Nickel put together? It took him a long time (I think it came out only within the last 5 years or so), but it looks to me like an excellent approach to grades 7–10 mathematics. He emphasizes learning concepts and developing “number sense” and he explicitly points to the Triune God as the foundation of mathematics along the way. I also like his approach to not try to split out geometry, trigonometry, probability, etc. into isolated components, but to advance mathematics as a whole throughout the curriculum. This summer I shared it with a friend who has been through the 224-Lesson Bible Framework course. I shared it with him because he has a son in upper elementary school that wants to be a scientist (and work at the Creation Museum!), but he (the dad) has fallen in love with it and is working through the curriculum himself!”
I put these three books on display at the front of our church by the pulpit so folks could browse through them after the church service. As Bible-believing Christians who have read through the Bible and have experienced the Bible Framework approach, we should begin to re-interpret all the secular courses in our educational background.
We should guide our children and grandchildren to be “cultural rebels” as Christian parents and grandparents who lived under Communist suppression in Romania and Slovakia taught their children. These children, now old adults, appreciate what their parents did for them. Rod Dreher recounts some of these stories in his book, Live Not by Lies.
Bible Framework Web (in)sites
Highlights from the Bible Framework website:
The 224-lesson Bible Framework course is now available to order on a single flash/jump drive. The flash drive is ideal for listening to the Framework on your car’s audio system that has a USB A port or on a laptop that does not have a DVD/CD player. Of course, it’s useful on a standard computer as well. Some TVs and stereos will also play the MP3 files included on this drive.
Do you want to listen to the Framework on the go? Try subscribing to the Framework Podcasts on your mobile device.
Highlights from the Bible Framework Applied website:
New: Charles Clough’s Revelational Foundations series in video and audio formats.
New: “The Babel Delusion” presentation from the 2021 Pre-Trib Study Group.
New: Flash/Jump drive now available for order with all Bible Framework Applied materials, plus bonus materials on Global Warming.
Links to Interlocked – the family-friendly (teenage) version of the Bible Framework – are available in English and Spanish.
Links to Podcasts of various Framework Applied series and instructions on how to set up podcasts on your electronic device can now be easily found on the Podcast Links page.
Transcripts of the Bible Framework Applied lessons are now searchable with an updated search feature, accessible from the main menu, under the Search tab.
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Announcements
Bayside Community Church
Guest Speaker July 10, 2022
3333 Bayshore Blvd,
Tampa, FL 33629,
Adult Sunday School 10 AM, Worship Service 11 AM
Prayer Requests
For continued exposure of the Bible Framework websites to the global community.
For updating and improvements to the original Bible Framework website, including a video series for Part 1 of the Framework explaining why the Framework is structured the way it is.
For developmental efforts for the new Bible Framework Applied website and addition of new materials.
For Charlie’s and Carol’s continued good health.
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