How God Can & Cannot be Known
15 Pages - 156K

This lesson covers the dangers of boxing God in to a HVP when attempting to learn who He is. We look at a couple examples of how unbelievers do this as well as a couple examples that believers fall into as well. This lesson is preparatory for beginning a study on God's attributes.

Preparing to know God
14 Pages - 148K

In our last lesson we looked at the strategies for interpreting Genesis. We dealt with the fact that evolution is not new! Rather, it’s an ancient belief of the Continuity of Being, that has come down through time and is now packaged in what we call Cosmic Evolution, the evolution of all things in the universe. It’s really nothing more than an outgrowth of that old HVP idea. It can be expressed mathematically, with slick equations, but after all is said and done it’s the same old belief in a Continuity of Being.

Even secular scholars admit that there’s a linkage going on between ancient paganism and modern paganism. Science really isn’t involved in this debate, its philosophy that’s involved, the philosophy of naturalism.

We also compared a brief list of characteristics in regards to Genesis and Evolution and saw that there were not only differences in the characteristics, but major differences in the sequence of things. One example we saw was in the Bible God created everything very good and death was introduced later so death becomes abnormal. Death is something that came in after creation because of man’s sin. Evolution uses death to bring about life. In the Bible we have life and then it descends into death.

Our worldview really determines how we interpret the book of Genesis. Even small influences from HVP can really cause us to get off track with the Scripture. We looked at three historical strategies that have been used to interpret the origins of the Bible:

• The Capitulation Strategy - using higher criticism, interpreters have influenced the church to completely surrender to cosmic evolution leaving Genesis behind as nothing more than a myth with individual spiritual meaning. We would call this the complete surrender strategy.
• The Accommodation Strategy - also called theistic evolution (God used evolution to create), this approach tries to get Genesis and evolution together and usually attempts this with one of three basic theories:
  • Gap Theory - interpreters place an indefinite period of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 followed by divine creation in six 24 hour days
  • Day-Age-Day theory - interpreters places indefinite periods of time between the six 24 hour days
  • Day-Age theory - interpreters read each of the six days is an indefinite period of time.

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Strategies for Interpreting Genesis
13 Pages - 172K

In our last lesson we looked at Enuma elish and compared that ancient unbelieving text with the Bible and what we found was there are only two fundamentally different worldviews. There may be 101 varieties in the details, but when we boil it down in the final analysis there are only two views, the unbelieving worldview (HVP) and the biblical worldview (DVP).

When we looked at these two views side-by-side we emphasized two key differences. First, was the Creator-creature distinction vs the Continuity of Being. The Continuity of Being basically says that god(s), men, angels, rocks only differ in degree, they are all just part of the universe, there is only one level of reality. Everything is on a scale of varying degree. There may be gods and goddesses, there may even be a god, but the idea is that he differs from us only in degree. In other words, think of IQ, he has greater IQ than we do, we have less IQ than he does, but he and we are connected by a scale only differing in degree. Think of strength, he may be bigger, he may be stronger but in the end he too shares the same environment we do.

Over against that idea, the Bible throws that idea out completely, at a very fundamental level. The Bible says that there is a Creator and a creation, and these realities cannot be bridged; there are two levels of reality, and there is no way for the creature to ever become the Creator. So there’s that fundamental distinction. This is going to have tremendous implications when we get into the NT Christology, the hypostatic union, kenosis and other doctrines. We are preparing ourselves early on in the bible to recognize the coherence of Scriptures. It’s wonderful, it’s more than wonderful, it’s the greatest orchestration ever. Nothing compares.

Second, was Personal Sovereignty vs Impersonal Chance. To get a good picture of Chance, think about the gods and goddesses warring with one another in Enuma elish. Each one trying to fight the other one off and this somehow brings into existence the universe. Somehow in unbelief, chaos leads to order. It’s always that way. But the problem with chance and chaos is that you can never forecast what’s going to happen tomorrow. I mean, if weathermen or stock brokers were running the universe we’d be in a lot of trouble because no one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. That has always been the dilemma of the unbelieving system. It never can stabilize. That’s the pagan picture of how the universe is run. Contrast that with Scripture, 1 Kings 22 and Job 1, who’s running the universe? Demons, even Satan himself, comes into His presence, do you see any of them warring with the Lord? There’s no war. They’re not going to take Him on. There’s not a challenge there. A Person who is absolutely sovereign is running the universe and He says what can and cannot happen in His universe. He says you will do this and you will not do that, and Satan has no real say about it. There’s no chance there. This is the opposite of chance. That is a fundamental idea that we go back to again and again in the scripture. If you don’t grasp this difference you cannot really come to know the God of the Bible. It’s that fundamental.

So, all you have to do to discover whether a worldview is biblical or human is ask two questions. One, "How many levels of reality are there?" One or two? Every movie, every book, every religion will give one of those two answers. Second, "Who or what is running the universe?" A sovereign person or impersonal chance? There are no other options. Download the entire lesson

Review Questions (Lessons 1-5)
5 Pages - 76K

In learning any subject, repetition is key! You have to review the content in order to get it stuck in your mind so that it can be recalled when you need it. The following questions will serve as a review for you and help to get the sweeping review of what has been covered in the past five lessons. You will need to refer back to the notes on the site to answer some of these questions. Just remember that this is not homework it is all a part of the journey to learning to see your world through God's eyes. Take some time to think through this stuff...it will help! Download the review questions

Comparing Origins (DVP vs. HVP)
11 Pages - 152K

Avoiding the trap of religious neutrality was the main topic of our last lesson. If you learn nothing else in this course, it would a great thing to learn the fact that no one is ever neutral. Neutrality is an illusion usually offered up as some sort of open-mindedness! But no one is an empty cup when it comes to the basic assumptions of life. It’s important to not buy into what someone says without examining it.

Often this issue of neutrality crops up in the realm of education. While public schools make an effort to be neutral they cannot avoid the humanist religion as taught through evolution. All throughout the scientific training of our schools there exists this commitment to remain neutral, that is, to not commit to a certain god for the origin of mankind.

However, we discussed that humanism is really just another religion with man set up as the final authority of everything. They exclude the God of the Bible from the schools in effort to teach another worldview. But we stand on the final authority of the Scripture, and it tells us that God is the Creator and is therefore important for every subject.

Let’s think about the logic. If God is who the Bible says He is, then He has structured the universe His way and the universe reflects His character and His being. So is God important in every subject?

What does the neutrality theory start with? If somebody believes in the neutrality theory, they’re saying math is math, whether or not God exists; history is history whether or not God exists; literature is literature whether or not God exists. But if that’s so, they’ve already by implication denied that the God of the Bible can exist, because if He did exist He would be important for all these subjects. And they’re saying He’s not important for these subjects because they say the subjects don’t change, whether or not He’s there. The moment they said that, they denied the existence of God. So, the myth of neutrality is not neutral. It denies the existence of God.

This way of thinking may be difficult at first if you have never thought about it before, but you must start to think more critically about what lies underneath the HVP.

In our last lesson we also discussed the fact that man has eternity in his heart, meaning that he has a built in desire to press to the furthest context of his existence to understand who he is, where he has come from, what is truth, and what is the ultimate reality. This desire can never be satisfied with HVP as Solomon shows us in the book of Ecclesiastes. Only a relationship with the Creator will satisfy eternity in man’s heart.

In this lesson we move on with our focus of the creation event and begin to think through the DVP of origins verses the HVP of origins. We will establish some very important differences between the two ways of thinking that will lay the foundation for many other HVP lies. This lesson contains the most fundamental point of the book of Genesis and it must not be missed if you want to understand DVP throughout the Bible. Download the full lesson

The Importance of Origins (Part 2)
8 Pages - 120K

Understanding the importance of origins in developing a DVP was the topic of our last lesson. We discovered how the following foundational questions will be answered through our study of Genesis:

• Who is God and what is He like?
• Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?
• Is truth absolute and where does it come from?
• Where did evil come from? Is there any escape from it?

The answers to these questions form what we would call our ultimate assumptions or beliefs needed to know anything. Without answers to these questions you would never attempt to gain knowledge on anything.

So much of what we need to make sense of this world is found in God’s first book of the Bible. Also, we looked at several passages in Revelation to see the symmetry of the Bible. The Creation event was such a monumental event that we will still be praising God for it in heaven. This event will be remembered and recalled eternally!

We also looked at how origins is really at the heart of all men. It’s very important to realize that whenever you discuss origins you’re really discussing a person’s ultimate belief, and that ultimate belief is part and parcel with their view of God. A person’s view of origins will always reveal a persons view of God (or god) - they are that closely related.

Our last lesson also covered the importance of origins for meaning. All communication requires a certain set of basic truths. We looked at three:

1. Meaning Requires Classification - What are the necessary conditions of the world needed to classify things?
2. Meaning Requires Stability - Is the universe stable so that I can depend on my classifications remaining the same.
3. Meaning Requires Context - Does my classification fit in the immediate context of what I see and ultimately to the entire context of the universe?

As we learn more about the doctrine of Creation we are going to see how God created man in His image so that man comes with the needed abilities to understand his environment. Because man is made in God’s image he can classify things with language that is meaningful. Because the universe is stable we can be sure that what we learn about our classifications isn’t going to transmute into something else later. And because God created the entire universe, our classifications can be meaningful within their contexts. This context only makes sense in light of ones view of origins.

Let me briefly expand this idea of how meaning is found in context. We always classify things with the context in mind, this is the only way to get the meaning. If I’m going to get meaning in life I’ve got to push the boundaries of context out all the way to eternity. However, the problem for the unbeliever is that when you push as far as you can go there’s nothing there. According to their worldview there is only mystery and chaos and you don’t get meaning from mystery and chaos.

We summed up our thoughts on the importance of origins for meaning when we said: you can't say anything about anything without saying (by implication) something about everything. The term "everything" points unmistakably to origins our ultimate context. If this is true, then is it possible for anyone to be neutral on the origins issue?

In this lesson we want better understand the idea of neutrality so that we can avoid buying into its agenda. This will greatly help us to make sense of the controversy surrounding origins and how it robs us of real meaning.

Finally we will turn to what God has said in His Word concerning all of mankind’s heart desire to understand the issue of origins and their place in it. Download the full lesson

The Importance of Origins
8 Pages - 104K

Our objective up to this point has been to prepare our minds for continual change. We want to be transformed in our way of looking at the world so that it agrees with God’s view. As we saw in our last lesson God’s viewpoint does not coincide with man’s. Man may harden his heart to God, but this does not change the truth of God and His final authority.

Remember how God confronted Adam and Even in the garden? He came to them in hiding and approached them with the question, “where are you?” God used a question to help Adam and Eve think through their own HVP. He then took them back to the historical command that He had given them, specifically not eating from the tree of good and evil.

Adam and Eve had considered themselves as the final authority of what was right and wrong. They wanted to weigh out what they thought best; to believe God (the Creator) or to believe Satan (a creature). In the end they made the decision and they followed Satan’s direction. We will talk more about this in future lessons, but we need to realize that God did not accept their attempt to be a final authority. Nor did he accept that they could appeal to some neutral ground in which there was no responsibility. Rather God held them responsible and judged them according to their sin. In the end, Adam and Eve changed their HVP to reflect God’s DVP.

We want to change our HVP as well. Our desire is to see our HVP overcome by a deep trust in DVP. By studying God’s Word in the present we can prepare ourselves for the stressful situations that are sure to come in the future. Rather than waiting for a difficult circumstance to come and take us off guard, we want to think through our DVP strategy now. Establishing what God has said on the major areas of life is where we will start; remembering to apply what we learn through the ReConnecT drill.

Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

We also discussed the importance of being prepared with a DVP strategy in order to respond to the questioning unbeliever. When you apply the ReConnecT Drill in your life, there will be a time when others notice how you respond to difficult circumstances. This will bring questions from the unbeliever about how you are able to deal with this or that. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us to be ready to respond to these questions giving a reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect.

In this lesson we want to begin to look at the importance of studying origins and how these truths effect the foundations for making sense of the world around us. Download the full lesson