MY 3 BIGGEST PASTORAL PARADIGM SHIFTS, PART 1

CHANGING PARADIGMS 

until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
Ephesians 4:13-14

As I reflect on my upcoming pastoral anniversary I've also had cause to reflect on three of my most significant paradigm shifts over my pastoral career. As a teenager I knew that God had me to be a minister. I cut my teeth as a preacher on the streets of Geelong in my teen years. I served as a Youth Group leader in two Victorian churches, then as a Youth Pastor in a Melbourne church. 

Following this I was made the Assistant Pastor in that same church where I continued to serve for a year. Just after the birth of our first child, Kim and I pioneered a church just outside the centre of the city of Melbourne. After three years we handed this church over to a new pastor as we sensed God calling us to move. We had several pastorates offered to us but none were God's will for us. One Friday night I heard God speak into my heart, "I'm sending you to Tasmania." We arrived in August 1995, uninvited, unknown, and probably unwanted. The first Sunday here was September 3rd and I was asked to speak at Legana Assembly of God. The former Senior Pastor's last Sunday was September 10th. After his last sermon at Legana I was voted in as the new Senior Pastor by all 17 members and commenced duties on Sunday September 17th, 1995. Since then I have had three significant paradigm shifts.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 
Romans 1:20

When I was pioneering our church in Williamstown Melbourne I was keen to grow our church through evangelism rather than through transfers from other churches. One of our main evangelism outreaches was when we invited Creation Ministries International's Dr Don Batten to hold some outreach meetings. We hired the Hobson's Bay High School auditorium and leaflet dropped the entire community. I was not only a convinced creationist, I was convinced a Young Earth Creationist. The way I had been taught to read the Bible was to take everything literally. When Genesis 1 described God creating in specific "days" I saw no alternative than this being a literal series of 24 hour days. Added to this was a rough calculation by Bishop James Ussher in the seventeenth century who had added up the genealogies in the Bible to arrive at a creation date of 4004BC, which meant that in 1992, the universe was around 6,000 years old. 

I was taught that the only alternative to this Biblical view of how the world began was Darwinian Evolution which starts with a random uncaused "Big Bang". From this unlikely cause of the universe a primordial prebiotic soup was hit by lightning and the first life was assembled which then eventually evolved into all the different life forms on the earth. 

Around the time of our Creation Outreach, my non-Christian father inlaw, who was a professional scientist and engineer, began to challenge my belief in the God of the Bible. He asked me a loaded question. "How could the flood of Noah be a global flood since there is not enough water on, below, or above the earth to supply all the water needed?" I consulted Dr Batten with this question. The answer I received and passed onto my unbelieving father inlaw only led to him being further hardened to the Gospel. I was told that prior to the worldwide flood of Noah, there were no mountains, therefore there would be the need to have as much water as we would need today. A verse out of the Psalms was cited to prove this - despite Psalm 104:8 saying that God originally created the earth with valleys and mountains!

After we relocated to Tasmania I still held a Young Earth Creation paradigm. I was a subscriber to the Creation magazine and used their resources. At this time, I still believed that this was the only way to understand Genesis 1. It was not until Pastor Ron Wilson, from Hobart Assembly of God, mention something to me about my adamant Young Earth Creationist position with a comment that stunned me, "That's not the only way to look at Genesis 1." I knew Pastor Ron to be a man who loved God and the Word of God. He was thoroughly committed to the inerrant, infallible, divinely inspired Word of God. Yet, he suggested that I read a book that I had never of, "A MATTER OF DAYS" by an author I had never heard of, Dr. Hugh Ross. 

I did. Rather than pitching "science" as the enemy (as Young Earth Creationism does) Dr Ross showed from Scripture that God invited people to use science to investigate the claims of the Bible. God's Word doesn't say that the observable world was an unreliable source of revelation about God's creation. On the contrary. He also showed that God revealed His truth authoritatively through the Bible, but that the Bible also said He revealed generallythrough nature (the observable Universe). 

For His invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.Romans 1:20
¶ God's glory is on tour in the skies,
God-craft on exhibit across the horizon. Psalm 19:1

In fact, this notion has a long history in Christian thought. For example, the Belgic Confession (1567) states-

"We know Him by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe; which is before our eyes as a most beautiful book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are so many letters leading us to see clearly the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and deity, as the apostle Paul says (Rom.1:20). All which things are sufficient to convict men and leave them without excuse.
Second, He makes Himself more clearly and fully known to us by His holy and divine Word, as far as is necessary for us in this life, to His glory and our salvation."
Belgic Confession, Article 2

This alone was a huge paradigm shift for me. I had been taught that "secular" science was corrupted by sin and that secular scientists could not look at the evidence properly because they were not born-again. Dr. Hugh Ross pointed out in his book that the Bible no where teaches this!

But the biggest challenge to my Young Earth Creation paradigm was the age of the Universe. If we add up all the genealogies in the Bible going all the way back to Adam, you end up with a date range of Adam being created around 4000-5000 BC. I never questioned this. But then I discovered that the Bible's genealogies were never intended to be used this way. Not only this, I discovered that there are massive  and deliberate gaps in the Biblical genealogies. This becomes evident when we compare the same genealogy recorded in two different Biblical passages. For example-

• Ezra 7:1-5 and I Chron. 6:3-14 shows that six names are left out in Ezra 7:3.

• In Exodus 6:16-20, four generations are given from Levi to Moses, yet in First Chronicles 7:23-27 lists 11 generations (many more than four) between Levi's brother Joseph and Moses' successor Joshua.

• The structure of the genealogies in Genesis also implies that the names could have been carefully selected with deliberate omissions, as in Matthew 1. Both the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies include ten names, and each ends with a father having three sons. Enoch, the key name in the Genesis 5 list, is seventh in the list, paralleling Lamech, the seventh in the list of the generations of Cain's descendants (Gen. 4:17-19). 

There is a huge difference in time taken between four generations and eleven generations! And this is just one example of how the genealogies cannot be used accurately determine dates. As one Biblical Hebrew scholar said about the peculiar way the Bible records genealogies, it would be perfectly in keeping if the Bible said David was 40 when he begat Joseph who was betrothed to Mary. But it wasn't this information alone which caused me see that Young Earth Creationism was not a faithful reading of the Scripture. After all, I still couldn't reconcile an Old Earth position and death before the Fall. Since Romans 5:12 stated there was no death in the Universe before Adam and Eve fell into sin, this verse alone made Old Earth Creationism impossible to reconcile with Scripture. But Dr. Ross dealt with this in his book as well. 

¶ Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—
Romans 5:12

This is a major tenent of Young Earth Creationism - that Adam introduced death into the Universe - and it is entirely based on this verse (there are no other verses in the Bible which support or state this). Taking a slower look at this verse though we notice that it doesn't say what it is claimed to be saying. It does not say that Adam introduced to death to the world of all living things - "and so death spread to all men because all sinned". Death came to mankind- not all living things. This was a huge paradigm shift for me. It also enabled me to reconcile some of the other Creation passages of the Bible conisistently. For example, Psalm 104 is a Creation Psalm. To claim that since the last few verses of this Psalm are the Psalmist's reflection on God's creation with a prayer (note the opening phrase of this closing section- "I will sing to the Lord...May my meditation be pleasing to Him..." vss. 33-34) and that sinners be consumed and the wicked be no more  means that this not a Creation Psalm is an exegetically weak argument. The Psalm states that lions were created to seek God for their prey (which necessitates the death of other animals from the beginning of creation). 

The young lions roar for their prey,
seeking their food from God.
Psalm 104:21

God has designed the digestive systems of lions to eat meat. To suggest that all lions were vegetarian and then suddenly carniverous when Adam sinned is to state something that the Biblical Text does not say or invoke some kind of hyper-evolution. Far from death being a bad or morally evil thing, God had perfectly designed death to fulfil His purpose of one day vanquishing all evil from the universe. It is the result of God's perfect design that certain bacteria only has a three-hour life-cycle, and that rabbits only live for about 12 years - not the result of the Fall. It is a foundational principle of God's redemption of His creation that reaches its ultimate expression in the Cross that life comes from death.

When I researched the expression "there was evening and there was morning" I discovered that it only used in Genesis 1. Days don't usually start with evenings. This indicates that the days of Genesis 1 are not ordinary days. The Hebrew word for day Yom is a linguistic wildcard word that takes its meaning from the context it is in. For example, in Genesis 2:4, the entire 6 'days' of Creation plus the 7th 'day' of rest (which does not have an "evening and morning" concluding statement to it) are called a "yom" which most English translators render "week" - even though it is the same Hebrew word as Genesis 1 uses.

I include this paradigm shift as an essential part of my pastoral ministry. The tragedy of discovering these facts when I did was that it was about a year after my father inlaw died at an early age. In my time as a pastor I had met many many people who considered the God of the Bible as implausible because my Young Earth Creationism contradicted what the scientific data revealed about the origins of the universe and life. Far from there only being two options for the Christian (as the Young Earth Creationist movement suggests) there is a credible, Biblical, scientifically verifiable, way of reconciling what the Belgic Confession calls the "two books". This view is not evolution. An Old Earth view does not demand Evolution. Dr. Ross and his team at RTB have presented a Scientific Model in which is the immediate Creator of all biological prototypes including mankind's Adam and Eve. This view is thus faithful to the Gospel and consistent with all Scripture. This has made a huge difference to my pastoring. Over the past few years we have seen University science students, medical students, and philosophy students, among our converts to Christ because they heard a credible way to reconcile the record of Scripture with the record of science. As Holly, a Bio-Science Uni student said recently at her baptism, "I thought all Christians were stupid until I came and heard Dr. Hugh Ross when he spoke in Launceston!" 

There's more I could share about how this paradigm shift has increased my pastoral effectiveness and made a more faithful preacher of God's Word, but it can wait until I share my other two significant paradigm shifts over the next two weeks.

Next week: 

Ps. Andrew

What Happens When Dr Hugh Ross Visits Your Church

We've just hosted Astronomer and Astrophysicist, Dr Hugh Ross, for a five day Easter campaign. Before he arrived, after we announced he was coming to Launceston, we became aware of the campaign of opposition to his visit. I only looked at a fraction of the emails which were put in circulation among my colleagues calling for a boycott of his visit. In these emails, and printed materials, Dr Ross was accused of being "a charlatan", "a tool of Satan", "an atheist pretending to be a Christian", "divisive", "heretical", who "distorted the Bible", promoted "secular" science over the Bible, and did not take the Bible "literally". In the week he actually arrived in Launceston, one 'ministry' website declared that Dr Ross was "racist" because "he teaches that Australian aboriginals are not human!" 

In every instance (and I did not have time to challenge every opponent) when I asked if these opponents if they had actually read a Hugh Ross book or attended one his talks, the answer was: no. This was extremely disturbing.

Our first meeting was a Business Breakfast which was nearly sold out two weeks before the event. For those familiar with events in Tasmania, this was extraordinary! In fact, we sadly had people turned away at the door of this first event because we were fully booked out. Dr Ross was questioned about how he understood the "days" of Genesis 1-2 and gave a reasoned response showing that the expression, 'evening and morning' occurs no-where else in Scripture (and is not applied to the seventh "day") and that the Hebrew word translated "day" ('yom') has four literal meanings - (i) 24 hours ("Last Tuesday was her birthday."); (ii) Daylight hours ("While it is day, we will work.");  (iii) Part of the day ("It took us all day to drive from Launceston to Hobart."); (iv) A long period of time ("Back in the Romans' day there was a lot of bloodshed."). Of note, Dr Ross pointed out that the Hebrew word for era, long time, is the same Hebrew word, "yom" (often translated in English as "day", but the same Hebrew word used Genesis 2:4 is used to describe the entire period of creation from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 1:26).

We held an Apologetics Seminar the same day as Business Breakfast which was nearly fully subscribed - quite remarkable for a mid-week, weekday event. One of the questions which came up during the seminar was about the physical laws such as gravity, the speed of light and the second law of thermodynamics.  Dr Ross stated that God created these laws to govern what He was creating. He cited Jeremiah 31:35 and 33:25 as straightforward examples of this Biblical claim. Thus, when someone attempted to persuade him that radio-metric dating techniques are unreliable, he simply pointed to the Scriptures to show that the Bible states it is designed by God to be reliable.

On Maundy Thursday we did a Radio Breakfast Show interview, where I pressed Dr Ross with some of the things that these anonymous emailers were accusing him of. One of the issues put to him was that he was interpretting the Bible with science - that is, despite the plain reading of the Biblical text only giving us thousands of years of existence, he was reading into the Text millions and billions of years. He responded by pointing out that the Bible does not give a date for the creation of the universe and the assumption of only thousands of years was built on a calculation of the genealogies which are known to be incomplete. He showed that the Hebrew expression, "father" was the same used to describe Grand-father, Great-Grand-father, Great Great-Grand-father and so on. [Listen]

We then filmed some interviews (keep an eye out for them on my YouTube Channel), had some private meetings, then did a sold-out Dinner meeting. Dr Ross showed that from the creation of the universe, the universe has expanded at an exquisitely fine-tuned rate. If it had expanded any slower, our universe would not have come into existence. If it had initially expanded any quicker, our universe would not have been formed. The margin of error for this expansion rate is so infinitesimally small that it is like driving then accelerating your car for a million kilometres at a speed/rate that must not waver to at least the 47th decimal place. 

Good Friday morning was held in our church at Legana and was full.

We then hired the largest hall in Launceston for our Good Friday evening service as part of the Launceston Easter Community Festival. Around 900 attended this meeting where Dr Hugh Ross gave the scientific evidences for the existence of the God of the Bible. He was quizzed on the law of decay (mentioned in Romans 8). He pointed out that this was a necessary component to God's good creation of the world. Dying, ageing, wearing-out, decay, running down, are all an essential part of life and without it life itself could not be. When a star, such as our Sun, gives off light, it is decaying. When we eat food, our stomach breaks down the food in order to draw the necessary nutrients for our bodies. We know that both of these aspects of decay were in play before the Fall of Man.

One of the comments from an attender was that Dr Ross had presented him with a problem. When I asked "How so?" He replied, "My vision of God was far too small - now I need a bigger one!" Another attender told me that they had previously been taught that science was corrupted because of the Fall and couldn't be trusted, but he could now see that this was utterly wrong and that God had decreed science to observe what He has done and to receive glory as we admire His works in the Book of Nature.

The night was made even more memorable by the presence of so many ministers of the churches of Launceston being in attendance. Bishop John Harrower even drove up from Hobart just to lend his support to the evening! While Dr Ross appealed to the head, I summed up his address and appealed to people's souls, Sonia Bowen and the assembled worship team appealed to the hearts of those present. This is partly why we referred to the Festival as a Festival of Art - Music - and, Thought.

Resurrection Sunday was full in the morning. This was quite a change in pace. Rather than have Dr Ross speak, I interviewed him. Because I knew Dr Ross, and some of the personal struggles he has had to overcome, I was able to draw these out in the interview. For many people this was the highlight of Dr Ross's ministry with us. People were particularly enthralled by his position on supernatural gifts and miracles.

Then Sunday night we nearly filled the Tailrace Centre. I interviewed Dr Ross so that people got a broad idea of where he was coming from, and then we took Q & A.  One of the questions, which was quite aggressive, related to the Old Testament genealogies and the ages of the fathers. Dr Ross attempted several times to answer the question without the freedom to do so by the listener. Here is some background information from Doug Ward about this issue-

Have you ever added up the numbers in the genealogies of Gen. 5 and 11 to compute the number of years from Adam to the Flood, and from the Flood to Abraham? I know that I have, at least a couple of times. I can remember my grandmother doing this sum on the back of an envelope when I was boy. She may have even assigned it to me as an exercise in arithmetic. 

If you have carried out this computation, you are certainly not alone. Bishop Usher's famous seventeenth-century estimate that Adam was created in 4004 B.C. was partially based upon it. The numbers are just sitting there, waiting to be added up. 

But is there any significance to the fact that the biblical text itself does not list the totals? The Bible does periodically give chronological information-e.g., Ex. 12:40 mentions that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, I Kings 6:1 gives a figure of 480 years from the Exodus to the building of Solomon's temple, and Judges 11:26 states that 300 years elapsed between Israel's arrival in the Promised Land and the time of the judge Jephthah-but it is silent about the total time from Creation to the Flood and from the Flood to Abraham. 

The answer may be that the genealogies in Gen. 5 and 11 were not intended to give an unabridged record of the time before Abraham. In fact, an examination of other biblical genealogies reveals that these lists often skip generations. 

Some Examples of Omissions 

A prime example is the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. When Matt. 1:8 mentions ``Joram begat Ozias''(KJV), three generations are omitted: Ahaziah (2 Kings 8:25), Joash (2 Kings 12:1), and Amaziah (I Kings 14:1). Later, in verse 11, Jehoiakim is left out (2 Kings 23:34). Here Matthew's purpose is not to give an exhaustive account of Jesus' ancestry; rather, he is establishing that Jesus was a descendant of David, as the Messiah was prophesied to be. The numerical equivalents of the Hebrew consonants in David's name add up to 14, and Matthew is emphasizing Jesus' Davidic ancestry by listing his genealogy in three groups of fourteen notable individuals (Matt. 1:17). 

Matthew gives an even more striking abridgment in the opening sentence of his genealogy: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.'' In [2], Walter Kaiser comments that if Matt. 1:1 were written in the style of Genesis 5, it might read something like,``And Abraham was 100 years old, and he begat David. And David was 40 years old, and he begat Jesus Christ.'' After all, Matthew 1 is intended to trace the messianic line, and Abraham was 100 when he begat Isaac, through whom this line continued on to David. Similarly, David was about 40 when Solomon, the next occupant of his throne, was born. 

Comparisons of other biblical genealogies reveal further omissions in a number of them, as Green documents in [1]. For instance, a comparison of Ezra 7:1-5 and I Chron. 6:3-14 shows that six names are left out in Ezra 7:3. Another example of apparent omissions occurs in Exodus 6:16-20, where four generations are given from Levi to Moses. There are several reasons to suspect that this account is condensed: 

(a) I Chron. 7:23-27 lists 11 generations (many more than four) between Levi's brother Joseph and Moses' successor Joshua. 

(b) Numbers 3:19,27 lists the total number of males in the Kohath clans at 8600 one year after the Exodus, including 2750 between the ages of 30and 50 (Num. 4:36). If there were only two generations from Kohath to the Exodus, then Kohath must have been very prolific indeed! 

(c) Kohath was born before the Israelites settled in Egypt (Gen. 46:11), so Kohath was at least 350 years older than Moses. There is room for many more than two generations in these 350 years. 

These examples and others suggest that the Gen. 5 and 11 may themselves contain omissions. The structure of the lists in Genesis also implies that the names could have been carefully chosen, as in Matthew 1. Both the Gen.5 and 11 lists include ten names, and each ends with a father having three sons. Enoch, the key name in the Gen. 5 list, is seventh in the list, paralleling Lamech, the seventh in the list of the generations of Cain's descendants (Gen. 4:17-19).  

But if the numbers in Gen. 5 and 11 are not meant to be added, why are they mentioned in the text? Green and Kaiser suggest that these numbers may be meant to show the effects of sin on the long lifespans that God apparently originally intended for man. Abraham's life of 175 years and Moses' life of 120 were significantly shorter than the lifespans of over 900 years recorded by Adam, Methusaleh, and Noah.

- http://graceandknowledge.faithweb.com/add.html

And more great articles at-

www.reasons.org

Lots of people contributed to making Dr Ross's visit to Launceston such a success. Without the efforts of several key people, this enormous event could not have happened. The feedback we received from seekers, struggling Christians, and non-Christians was incredibly encouraging. Many people stated that they now had good reasons to believe in the God of the Bible and to put their faith in Jesus Christ as Creator, Lord and Saviour.

Andrew Corbett

Has Paradise Been Lost

To properly understand "the end" we need to properly understand the beginning. The latest installment from Hank Hanegraaff makes much of the idea that Paradise has been lost and must be 'restored'. The idea that Paradise was "perfect" has some serious implications for how we understand the Bible!
How would you define "perfect"? l'm not sure that too many people have pondered how many things in life are perfect. Perhaps most Christians would regard only two things as "perfect": (i) God, and (ii) The original Creation.

Biblical literacy involves being able to discern what is indeed a Biblical statement, and what is meant by a Biblical statement. When it comes to pondering what "perfect" means, we may have a problem if we look to support our two examples with Scripture. Firstly, Matthew 5:48 asserts that God is perfect. Not only is God essentially perfect, but so are His ways (Deut. 32:4), and His will (Rom. 12:2).

In Hank Hanegraaff's book, The Apocalypse Code, he makes the assertion that the end will ultimately be a restoration of Paradise: "Paradise lost will be Paradise restored." The assumption behind this statement is that the original creation was both "Paradise" and that it was "perfect". This is just one way in which our understanding of the beginning affects our understanding of the end.
[Read more]

Does Gen2 Contradict Gen1?

I've also written about this issue- READ.