There is enough water in the oceans to cover a smooth world to a depth of about 9,000 feet.

https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/7446/if-the-earth-were-a-smooth-spheroid-how-deep-would-the-ocean-be

Then where did the water come from? To answer this question I will describe the Hydroplate Theory.  For a better overview see Brian Nickle’s 2:45:00 video or read Walt Brown’s online book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hhE6tzJR_c&t=11s

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html

This theory starts with only one assumption for the starting condition of the created earth.  There was a layer of subterranean water.  This layer was between the earth’s crust and the mantle.  As the Bible says, He separated the water from the water below.  This is supported by the fact that both times scientists have tried to drill to the mantle (kola dig, and KTB dig), they hit very salty water.  This water surprised the scientists because around past 5 miles, the pressure is so great that no crack can form for water to enter.  The pressure is so great on the rock that it forms a seal so the the water in the ocean cannot get into it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole#Research

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/96JB03945

Since most of the water in today’s oceans would have at first been in this underground layer, the original earth was all one connected continent.  In many places around the world, the earth’s crust would have dropped down to the mantle forming pillars, while the rest of the earth’s crust would be supported by the underground water.  Large lakes would have rested on these numerous depressions or pillars.  These are the pillars of the earth the Bible refers to:

Job 9:6,  “Who shakes the earth out of its place, And its pillars tremble;”

Psa 75:3,  "The earth and all who dwell in it melt; It is I who have firmly set its pillars.”

1Sa 2:8b,  "For the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S, And He set the world on them.”

Due to the great amount of pressure on this water layer being under 60 miles of the earth’s crust and other forces such as the tidal pumping of the moon, the water began to heat up to the point that it became supercritical water.  This supercritical water is still escaping this underground layer into the bottom of the ocean through hydrothermal vents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent#Physical_properties

Then one fateful day a crack formed in the earth’s crust stretching from the surface to the underground water layer.  The extremely pressurized water then exploded out of the crack at supersonic speeds.  This caused the crack to spread exponentially in both directions releasing even more water.  This crack encircled the globe in a matter of hours tracing what is known today as the mid-oceanic ridge.  The mid-oceanic ridge basically forms a circle and runs through every ocean on earth like the seam of a baseball.  The mid-oceanic ridge intercepts itself in the Indian Ocean, making a T-formation.  This is where one end of the crack terminated by running into the other end of the crack.  Since both ends of the crack were travelling at the same speed, we can trace the distance back from this T-formation and determine where the initial crack began.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-ocean_ridge

As the water exploded into the air, it went into the atmosphere and came down around the world as water and snow.  Eventually water covered the earth thick enough to stop the water from exploding upwards.  But the water level still rose just like when a hose is placed in a pool.  Once the water level is high, the spray from the hose is no longer observed but the water level still rises.  This is why it says Gen, 7:12  “The rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.”

But then says Gen 7:18,  “The water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. Gen 7:19,  The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. Gen 7:20,  The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. . . Gen 7:24,  The water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days.”  

 Finally enough water had left the underground chamber that the water underneath could no longer hold up the rock above so that it could escape.  So the chamber was closed off trapping the remaining water into its chamber.  As the Bible says in Gen 8:2,  “Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky was restrained; Gen 8:3,  and the water receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of one hundred and fifty days the water decreased.”

As the water sprayed outward, it wore away the edges of the crack decreasing the weight of the crust in that area to the point that the mantle rose up forming the mid-oceanic ridge, just like when the earth springs back as an ice cap melts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

This occurred first at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  As the mantle rose, the North and South American plates separated from the Eurasia and African plates.  These plates slid easily on the water below them because supercritical water is nearly frictionless.

Eventually these continental plates hit resistance which caused the plates to compress.  As a result, they became shorter and thicker.  This thickening caused the continents to rise out of the water leaving the oceans and continents that are observed today.  The edge of continents are the edges of the mid-oceanic crack that slid away.  This explains why there is a steep drop off at the edge of every continent instead of a gradually sloping towards the bottom of the ocean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_shelf

Mountain ranges also formed during this compressing of the continental plates, and they formed perpendicular to the direction of motion of the continental plate. That is why the Rockies and the Andes are on the opposite side of the continent as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and also why the east coast of Africa is raised.  It explains why short mountains such as the Appalachian and Ural Mountains also run from north to south.  The formation of other mountain ranges are more complicated due to the formation of the Pacific Ocean.

As the mantle rose in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the rock below it moved up to replace the void and the rock below it and so on and so on, until the pacific ocean on the other side of the world sank to fill in the void under it.  All of this moving rock grinding against each other caused the rock to melt and produce magma.  This is why the ring of fire is around the Pacific Ocean and there are 40,000 volcanoes over a kilometer high on the Pacific Ocean floor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire

http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/submarine

When weight such as mountains is concentrated on a spinning sphere such as the earth, the surface rotates so that the concentrated mass will spin around the equator.  The most massive mountains on earth are the Himalayans.  This is why the Himalayans are so close to the equator.  They are not on the equator because they are counter balanced by other mountain ranges.  Centrifugal force causes the earth to bulge at the equator.  As each rotation occurred moving the newly formed Himalayans closer to the equator, the earth’s equatorial bulge formed at a different place each time.  This caused the earth’s crust to crack, and this crack continued each time a new bulge was formed.  The Ninety East Ridge in the Indian Ocean is this crack.  It is a 3,100-mile straight line pointing directly towards the Himalayan Mountains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_bulge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety_East_Ridge

The waters eroded away massive amounts of dirt from the sides of the cracks.  This mud was then sorted into worldwide layers by the flood waters forming the geological column through a process called liquefaction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction

The subterranean waters were rich in minerals from many years of the supercritical water dissolving the rock walls of the underground chambers.  These minerals along with the extreme heat and pressure from the flood generated the fossil record.  These minerals are also the reason for the saltiness of the oceans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permineralization

https://www.sciencealert.com/fake-fossil-method-baked-in-a-day-artificial-maturation-sediment

Much of the water initially froze to form large ice caps leaving evidence that is interpreted as an ice age, so that ocean levels were lower and the world’s continental shelf was exposed.  This allowed men to travel to every continent on land bridges.  As the ice began to melt, ocean levels and lake levels rose.  As the Atlantic Ocean water level increased, it breached the strait of Gibraltar and formed the Mediterranean Sea, probably inspiring the story of Atlantis.  Waters draining away from North America left Hopi Lake trapped in the Colorado Mountains.  It also eventually overflowed carving out the Grand Canyon.  This is unless, of course, you would rather believe the prevailing story that the Grand Canyon was carved by the Colorado River flowing uphill 5,000 ft. for millions of years!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis#In_or_near_the_Mediterranean_Sea    

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidahochi_Formation

I would like to address two questions in this essay.  First, if the earth is so young, why can we see star light from billions of lightyears away?  Second, is radiometric dating reliable?

The answer to the first question is that, contrary to what Einstein believed, light is not a constant.  Scientists in the laboratory have been able to slow down, stop, and even speed up the speed of light.

https://www.livescience.com/396-scientists-mess-speed-light.html

Also the speed of light is naturally getting slower.    They have discovered this by seeing how starlight interacts with the universe as they have measured the speed of light over the past 300 years.  The results reveal that it is getting slower.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-speed-of-light-slowed-down/

http://www.ldolphin.org/constc.shtml

Finally, it turns out that evolutionists actually have the same problem, known as the horizon problem.  Even thinking the universe is 13 billion years old, scientists have still concluded that light should not yet have reached the far edges of space.  So too the evolutionists have concluded light used to go a lot faster.  We actually agree on something.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-speed-light-even-faster-early-universe-180961233/

 This also means that Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2 (energy equals mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light) can no longer be used to determine E (energy) because c (the speed of light) is an unknown.  The atomic number is divided by energy to determine a decay constant.  All radiometric dating methods depend on the decay constant being, well, constant.  Thus all radiometric dating methods depend on light being constant while it is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger–Nuttall_law

Now, let’s talk about the problems with radiometric dating.  There are many radiometric dating methods, but the most famous three are carbon 14 dating, uranium-lead dating, and potassium-argon dating.  All three of these work by measuring the amount of daughter element in a sample (carbon 12, lead, and argon respectively) and calculating the amount of time for this amount of daughter elements to form from their parent elements by using today’s observed half-life rate of the parent elements.

But this method makes a number of assumptions.  Let’s use a burning candle as an example.  Let’s say you entered a room and saw a burning candle.  Then your friend asks you to determine how long it had been burning.   The first thing you do is measure the length left in the candle.  This represents the amount of daughter elements that are found in a sample.  Next, you would observe the speed at which the candle is burning.  This represents today’s observed half-life rate.   However, in order to give an answer, you would have to make two assumptions.  First, how tall the candle was at the start.  This represents the amount of parent elements that were originally in the object.  Second, the rate at which the candle was now burning is the speed at which the candle had always burned.  Both of these assumptions are unknowns.

 Now let’s talk about the three methods specifically.  First, carbon 14 dating.  The theory behind carbon 14 dating is cosmic rays hit the atmosphere and generate carbon 14.  Plants then absorb this carbon 14 so that they end up with the same ratio of carbon 14 and carbon 12 as is present in the atmosphere.  Then when an herbivore eats the plant they end up with this same ratio.  And finally when a carnivore eats the herbivore they also end up with the same ratio.  So at the time of death, any organism has the same ratio of carbon 14 as the atmosphere; but as time goes on, carbon 14 decays into the more stable carbon 12 isotope.  I would like to note that carbon dating can thus only be used for dating things that were once living.  I have personally seen where a peer-reviewed scientific article ascribed a date to inorganic objects by using the carbon dating method.  This is, of course, nothing short of a flat-out lie.

Assumption #1:  Cosmic rays are constant.

If the earth was truly 5 billion years old, then cosmic rays have increased 30% since the beginning as the sun grew older.  Sunspots change the rate of cosmic rays.  Also the earth’s magnetic field has been decreasing in strength which acts as a shield against cosmic rays.  Evolutionists claim the magnetic field reverses every so often.  If this is true, it would really through carbon dating off.

Assumption #2:  Atmospheric carbon 14 is always constant.

Melting glaciers and volcanic eruptions add C12 to the atmosphere distorting the C14/C12 ratio.  This is why living plants on the Greek volcanic island of Santorini were dated to have died 1,000 years ago.  Just imagine what a global flood would do to this ratio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating_considerations

Assumption #3:  Plants absorb the same percentage of C14 as is in the atmosphere.

It has been demonstrated that there are different percentages of C14 levels in different tree layers corresponding to the constantly changing percentages of C14 in the atmosphere.  This is known as the De Vries effect.  This has been corrected by calibrating carbon dating by determining the amount of carbon in tree rings.  However, trees only live so long.  But the question that comes to my mind is if trees are used to calibrate carbon dating, how can carbon dating be used to determine the age of our oldest trees?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessel_de_Vries  

Assumption #4:  Herbivores acquires the same percentage of C14.

Living mollusks were carbon dated and found to be 27,000 years old.  Living snails were carbon-14 dated at 2,300 and 27,000 years old.  Evolutionists say this is because they got carbon from another secondary source.

Rivers also have reduced C14 concentrations because of C12 obtained from rocks being eroded by the river.  And thus, whatever drinks from rivers is affected.  This also effects ocean animals at the mouths of rivers.  Animals that eat dirt rich in carbon also have different C14 concentrations.  And, of course, whatever eats these animals will also have distorted C14 concentrations.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD011_3.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating_considerations

Assumption #5:  Carnivores acquire the same percentage of C14.

A freshly killed seal dated 1,300 years old.  Evolutionists say this is because they got carbon from deep in the ocean.  It has been found that C14 concentrations in the oceans are very inconsistent.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD011_4.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating_considerations

Assumption #6:  The decay rate is constant.

Decay rates have been observed not to be constant to some degree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay#Changing_decay_rates

Assumption #7:  There was no canopy of water over the atmosphere to disrupt cosmic rays like the Bible indicates.

 Second, Uranium-lead dating.  Uranium dating was used to determine the age of the Taung child ape-man.  However, since they needed the results to be 2.3 million years ago instead of 1 million years ago to fit with the scheduled evolution of man, they decided to admit that contamination was highly probable after all.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/new-isotopic-and-sedimentological-measurements-of-the-thabaseek-deposits-south-africa-and-the-dating-of-the-taung-hominid/6E9190C34D2DF04B7E4FF627B9421D7F

 In order to arrive at 4.5 billion years for the existence of the solar system, uranium lead was measured on 3 meteorites.  However, it has been proven that there is not enough uranium to account for all the lead on meteorites, thus for the 4.5-billion-year-result, the 3 meteorites were purposely selected.

This Nature article says “ … it is not widely appreciated, outside the ranks of those who work directly in geochronology or meteoritics that, judged by modern standards, the meteoritic lead-lead isochron is very poorly established.”

“This (work) shows unequivocally for the first time that there is indeed a real problem in the uranium/lead evolution in meteorites, in that in each of these meteorites there is now insufficient uranium to support the lead isotope composition.”

“It therefore follows that the whole of the classical interpretation of the meteorite lead isotope data is in doubt, and that the radiometric estimates of the age of the Earth are placed in jeopardy.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/physci240056a0

 Third, potassium-argon dating.  Again it is a false assumption that the K40/K39 ratio is always constant.  K40 is involved in weather cycles and nutrient cycling.  The list of carbon dating assumptions shows how subject to change these are, especially with a global flood.  It is also extremely easy for samples to be contaminated with the K40 in the air.  It has also been shown that other sources of Ar40 are possible.  Examples include glassy deep-sea basalts and contamination of magma by older rocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K–Ar_dating

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_potassium

 Finally, experiments have been done that have shown that various isotopes have decayed at a rate of 10,000 times greater in the presence of heated and pressurized water-exactly as would have been the conditions of the global flood.  We can assume this could be true for any radiometric dating method.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0375960109004113

 Creationists have their own radiometric dating isotope, Polonium-lead.  Granite is claimed to be formed as the earth’s molten crust cooled over millions of years.  However, unstable polonium 218 atoms are found in granite across the world which could have only existed 30 minutes before it had to have solidified in order to preserve it.  Otherwise it would have changed into lead.  Polonium 214 is also found in granite all over the world.  It would have changed into lead in 0.001637 seconds.  Therefore granite with Polonium 214 present had to have formed instantaneously.  Or, in other words, granite must have been the result of a supernatural creation.  Many attempts are made to claim samples were contaminated.  However, these same contamination pathways must also be possible for evolutionists dating methods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleochroic_halo

This is the second article by my son Isaac in a series on Creation vs. Evolution.  Evolutionists claim dinosaurs did not live with man but lived millions of years before man:

The Bible states that all land animals according to their basic kinds were created on the very same day as humans.  This would imply that dinosaurs walked with man.  But mainstream science states that this is an impossibility because dinosaurs were not recorded by man, nor are they found with man in the fossil record.

If ancient man did not record dinosaurs, the question should be asked what did ancient man record.  The flood was recorded by every single culture, great or small, with a written language.  Dinosaurs, however, were in fact recorded by ancient man.  The Bible itself provides proof that dinosaurs walked with man.  The book of Job records two dinosaurs: the behemoth in chapter 40 and the leviathan in chapter 41.  But the Bible is not alone.  Sauropods (the long neck, long tail kind of dinosaur) are found on artifacts all over the Middle East and even on the walls of Babylon.  In Acumbaro, Mexico, 33,000 ceramic and jade figurines of dinosaurs were discovered.   Sauropods are also found on artifacts all over in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan.  11,000 Inca stones were discovered in Peru, of which 500 contained pictures of dinosaurs.  A Buddhist temple in Angkor, Cambodia, has a carving of a stegosaurus.  Josephus and Herodotus both recorded the presences of what some experts have speculated are pterodactyls in the Arabian Desert.  This seems to correspond well with the western United States deserts where Native Americas recorded stories of the thunderbird.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpopard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acámbaro_figures

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-2.html

https://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodotus/the-edges-of-the-earth/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon#Regional_variations_across_Asia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ica_stones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta_Prohm#Representational_art

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_(mythology)

 

Should it then stand to reason that if dinosaurs lived with man, they should be found together in the fossil record?  First, they have only found about 2,000 complete dinosaur skeletons and fossils from only 6,000 early humans.  So the odds of any of these fossils being found together over the earth’s surface of 200 million square miles are extremely low without even taking depth into account.

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/unearthing-dinosaur-bones-and-fossils/

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils

Human fossils are also not found with many other animals alive today, such as the chicken.  This is because the fossil record is not a record of what animals lived when, but a record of animals that were buried in the global flood.  According to the Institute for Creation Research,

“the notion that the earth's crust has on "onion skin" structure with successive layers containing all strata systems distributed on a global scale is not according to the facts. Data from continents and ocean basins show that the ten systems are poorly represented on a global scale: approximately 77% of the earth's surface area on land and under the sea has seven or more (70% or more) of the strata systems missing beneath; 94% of the earth's surface has three or more systems missing beneath; and an estimated 99.6% has at least one missing system. Only a few locations on earth (about 0.4% of its area) have been described with the succession of the ten systems beneath (west Nepal, west Bolivia, and central Poland). Even where the ten systems may be present, geologists recognize individual systems to be incomplete. The entire geologic column, composed of complete strata systems, exists only in the diagrams drawn by geologists.”

Evolutionists refer to the worldwide gaps in the geological column as the great unconformity.  In fact, the geological column was originally constructed by Adam Sedgwich in 1835 as evidence for Noah’s flood.

https://www.icr.org/article/ten-misconceptions-about-geologic-column/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Unconformity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Sedgwick

Mainstream science claims that bones take millions of years to fossilize.  The only evidence given to support this claim is that no one has ever observed bone turn to fossil in nature.  However, bones have been observed to fossilize very quickly in labs under extreme heat and pressure.  Conditions of extreme heat and pressure would both be present in the event of a global flood.  Other objects that are claimed to take millions or billions of years to form in nature but form very quickly in a lab with heat and pressure include diamonds, turquoise, quartz, emeralds, rubies, mica, sandstone, limestone, marble, petrified wood, coal, and oil.  Also if fossils take millions of years to form, why do dinosaur fossils have soft tissue?  Certainly soft tissue would rot long before it fossilized according to evolutionists, even the remains of blood that were found in a T-rex.  A study was done on a number of dinosaurs at random to see how many had soft tissue.  The results were all of them!  Also, fossil raindrops would be impossible to form over millions of years.

https://www.sciencealert.com/fake-fossil-method-baked-in-a-day-artificial-maturation-sediment

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1631068311000911

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11036

 

Dinosaurs, however, could not have even survived millions of years ago.  The Apatosaurus, a sauropod, had nostrils that were only the size of a horse’s nostrils.  In fact, all sauropod lungs were too tiny to survive today.  And some scientists have even suggested that dinosaurs went extinct due to dropping oxygen levels.  This presents a major problem to the theory of evolution because it states that oxygen levels have evolved so that they are now at their highest point today – another example of how evolutionists defeat their own theory.  Sauropod lungs could not have supported them in today’s levels of oxygen, much less millions of years ago, since according to evolutionists, we are at the highest oxygen levels today.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14018981-200-last-gasp-for-the-dinosaurs/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatosaurus#Physiology

The answer evolutionists have come up with to this problem is that dinosaurs evolved into birds and therefore had bird lungs that were more efficient than reptile lungs.  There are four problems with this answer.  First, “birds from dinosaurs” theory claims that birds evolved from raptors not sauropods.  Second, Archaeoraptor was held up as the missing link to prove this theory, and it has proven to be a forgery.  Third, dinosaurs had a moving femur, which means, if they had birdlike lungs, their abdominal air sacs would have collapsed.  Fourth, some evolutionists now admit that birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs from which they are supposed to have descended.  Science Daily even states,

"Frankly, there's a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions," Ruben said. In some museum displays, he said, the birds-descended-from-dinosaurs evolutionary theory has been portrayed as a largely accepted fact, with an asterisk pointing out in small type that "some scientists disagree."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoraptor

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609092055.htm

http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/evolution/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19459194

Not only did dinosaurs get huge, but basically all animal life forms have representations that were much larger in the fossil record.  Many fish, sharks, whales, amphibians, reptiles, snakes, lizards, molluscs, kangaroos, and wallabies never stop growing.  And scientists also state that bugs were bigger millions of years ago again because of higher oxygen levels.  Amber readings also indicate oxygen levels were at one time 14% higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminate_growth#Animals

https://www.livescience.com/1083-oxygen-giant-bugs.html

https://geology.com/usgs/amber/

 

Another argument can be made that dinosaurs could not have lived millions of years ago because 800 species go extinct every day.  5 billion species are estimated to have ever lived.  At 800 species a day, 5 billion species would have gone extinct and all life would have ceased to exist in just 18,000 years.  It is also curious to note that besides the day-to-day extinction rates, evolutionists felt the need to add 28 major extinction events with 27 of them happening in just the last half billion, years or last 10% of earth’s life time.  How has life survived so long?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140902151125.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
 
 

My son Isaac Hall wrote this post.  He is good at Biblcal apologetics,   He is particularly defending young earth creation vs. evolution.  I am going to be posting a series by him. Here it is:

If we do not believe the first thing the Bible says, why should we believe any of the rest?  If creation and the global flood is dismissed on account of being supernatural, why not also the virgin birth, Christ’s resurrection, or any of His acts recorded inthe Gospels?  It also causes us to reject the hundreds of times that the Bible references the creation account. In Exo 4 God says He created the mouth and eyes.

In Exo 20 God gave the week and the Sabbath as a witness to creation, and in Mat 19 and Mar 10 Jesus said man was created at the beginning. Acts 14, 17 states men are equal on account of creation. Acts 17 also states we are the offspring of God (as opposed to animals). According to 1 Cor 11 man is to be the head of the household on account of creation. The following link is an incomplete list of over 300 Bible references to the creation account:
https://www.gospelway.com/creation/creation_list.php

A belief in billions of years minimizes the power of God shown in Genesis. It also forces us to believe that God did not create the world in perfection. It also requires us to believe that death was in the world before sin. If this is so, then Christ was needed to fix God’s mistake, not man’s sin. It also leads to a belief that God is not directly controlling everything that happens in the world and therefore not in control of our personal lives.  The idea that rejects the global flood leads to rejection of the belief that God has the right, willingness, and justice to judge sin.  He chose to use a global flood so that it would leave evidence as a witness thousands of years later. Also this is why Satan chose the rainbow for homosexuality.  Perhaps millions of people can believe evolution without their faith being jeopardized, but it is also true for millions of people that evolution is the reason they cannot accept the Bible. Because the Bible so clearly contradicts mainstream science, it is considered to be a mythology. Also the idea that Bill Nye repeated throughout his debate with Ken Ham is true. Our progress as humanity is dependent on how accurate we understand theprocesses that caused the universe to be how it is now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI

This is evident by the fact that 86.5% of all Nobel Prize winners are Christian (65.4%) or Jewish (21.1%). While 10.5% are atheist, agnostic, and freethinkers, most of their prizes are in literature, not science. This is true despite the Jewish people only making up 0.02% of the world’s population and Christians making
up just 30%.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Religion_of_Nobel_Prize_winners.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country

Hand washing is a good example of how our progress is dependent on our understanding of origin science. The man who came up with hand washing (a biblical principle, Exo 30:17-21) caused the death rate of women in labor to drop from 30% to 1%. Because his idea went against mainstream science, he was reward by being placed in a mental institution and beaten to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#Efforts_to_reduce_childbed_fever

Racism is rooted in evolution. Charles Darwin said in his book The Descent of Man:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
In the United States, whites were considered the more evolved race while blacks were the less evolved. In Germany, Aryans were considered more evolved while Jews were considered less evolved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Charles_Darwin

Thus Slavery is rooted in evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#Justification_of_slavery_in_the_US
Sexism is rooted in evolution. Charles Darwin said his book The Descent of Man:
“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is [shown] by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain--whether requiring deep thought, reason or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.” He added, “Thus man has ultimately become
superior to woman.” In 1881, women’s-rights activist Caroline Kennard wrote Darwin seeking clarification of his views on women. Darwin replied that “there seems to me to be a great difficulty from the laws of inheritance, (if I understand these laws rightly) in [women] becoming the intellectual equals of man.” According to the journal Scientific America, at a time when women were seeking the vote, Francis Galton, Darwin and other scientists hardened sexism into something that couldn’t even be challenged. Evolutionary psychology, a modern instantiation of Darwinian Theory, still provides justification for female nequality. Google engineer James Damore stated that females are under-represented at tech firms because they are less ambitious and more prone to “neuroticism” than males and “have a stronger interest in people rather than things.” These male/female differences are “exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective.” Evolutionary psychology states that females can only have one child every nine months, whereas men can impregnate an infinite number of women. Hence females are less promiscuous than males and more concerned with mates' "resources" than physical appearance. Females' sexual choosiness therefore is instinctual and innate.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/darwin-was-sexist-and-so-are-many-modern-scientists/

Eugenics is rooted in evolution. Modern eugenics was started by Francis Galton. After reading Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Francis Galton decided to apply his half cousin’s theory of natural selection to humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Origin_and_development
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1796

Abortion is rooted in evolution. Margaret Sanger was the mother of the modern birth control movement. She was a supporter of eugenics stating she sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit." By her open association with the KKK, it is easy to determine who she thought should be eliminated due to unfitness. In her book Pivot of Civilization, she wrote that the feeble-minded, mute, deaf, blind, epileptic, and poor were the “dead weight of
human waste.” In a letter she wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Margaret Sanger’s magazine recommended the work of Lothrop Stoddard, who, just like Margaret Sanger, was a founder of Planned Parenthood. He promoted the use of birth control to reduce the numbers of blacks and Jews. The Nazi concept of race and subhuman came directly from his book Untermensch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger#Eugenics
https://books.google.com/books?id=DjEbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA112#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://libex.smith.edu/omeka/files/original/d6358bc3053c93183295bf2df1c0c931.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothrop_Stoddard

The opinion issued by the Supreme Court on Roe v Wade cited Glanville Williams to justify their decision. Glanville Williams was a member of the eugenics society. He promoted abortion, sterilization, euthanasia, and suicide. It also cited Christopher Tietze, another member of the eugenics society, who is best known for promoting abortion. He joined the Population Council, another eugenics organization, in 1967. It also cites Gordon Rattray Taylor, who was the author of The Biological Time Bomb, which was about the remaking of society by eugenics, and The Great Evolution Mystery, where he defends the theory of evolution.
https://cdn.loc.gov/service/ll/usrep/usrep410/usrep410113/usrep410113.pdf
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-483/72256/20181115161842632_Planned%20Parenthood%20of%20Ind%20amicus%20brief%20final.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glanville_Williams
https://books.google.com/books?
id=4T4hAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=christopher+tietze+member+of+the+British+Eugenics+Society&source=bl&ots=hQX1iTWLFn&sig=ACfU3U3g
aaVnZgpps29bpC5SyQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3xd751NPlAhWrtlkKHaa9CZEQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=christopher%20tietze%20member%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Tietze
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Rattray_Taylor
http://eugenics.us/gordon-rattray-taylor-the-biological-time-bomb-the-remaking-of-society-via-eugenics-family-planning-and-education/196.htm

Nazism is rooted in evolution. Adolf Hitler had praised and incorporated eugenic ideas in Mein Kampf in 1925 and emulated eugenic legislation for the sterilization of "defectives" that had been pioneered in the United States once he took power. The eugenics movement fell from favor as a result of the world seeing the horrors of Nazi eugenics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#Nazism_and_the_decline_of_eugenics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_policy_of_Nazi_Germany

Communism is rooted in evolution. Karl Marx cited Darwin in his most famous book Capital and wanted to dedicate the book to Charles Darwin. He stated that the origin of species was the foundation of the historical materialism viewpoint. Also he wrote that Darwin's work was most important and suited his purpose in that it provided a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle. Communists from the very beginning were attracted to Darwinism
because, as Engels remarked in a letter to Marx that it eliminated “teleology” from the story of life’s history. That is, it obviated the need for understanding life’s development as having been directed by a transcendent personal being outside nature, and it opened the way to understanding history as being directed by impersonal forces of the kind envisioned by Marx. Vladimir Linen kept a statue on his desk that read Darwin and depicted a monkey contemplating a human skull. Joseph Stalin wrote an ideological tract, Anarchism or Socialism?, speculating on Darwinian science and declaring, “Evolution prepares for revolution and creates the ground for it; revolution consummates the process of evolution and facilitates its further activity. The Soviet Union believed the theory of evolution, as it was taught back then, was convenient for a Soviet government trying to engineer the perfect social utopia. Under this system, they thought they could quickly force plants and animals, even the Soviet people, into forms that could serve practical
requirements. Any scientist that did not believe this theory was declared an enemy of the State and thrown into prison or executed under Stalin. The logic was that if people are able to inherit the acquired characteristics, it could be possible to create a better society. This led the leaders of the Soviet Union to hope that peasants could be turned into exceptional citizens.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2709077?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://evolutionnews.org/2009/01/darwinism_communism_part_ii/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-the-soviet-union-chose-the-wrong-side-on-genetics-and-evolution-23179035/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

Also in the United States, the crime rates and related social issues that plague the country today started in the 60’s when evolution replaced God and the Bible
in the public schools. Below is a graph for violent crime rates. The pattern is repeated for all major crimes: assault, murder, theft and rape. These rates
began to drop again due to the invention and spread of security technology.
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/97466/1/Farrell%20Tilley%20Tseloni%202014%20Why%20the%20Crime%20Drop%20%28C%26J%20vol43%29.pdf
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/americas-faulty-perception-crime-rates
Abortion rates also skyrocketed in the 60’s. They also declined in the 90’s due to decreased pregnancies due to increased use of contraceptives. That seems to mean the problem has gotten worse not better.
https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2019/09/us-abortion-rate-continues-drop-once-again-state-abortion-restrictions-are-not-main
https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/us-abortion-rate-continues-decline-hits-historic-low

Between the 1960’s and now, the rate of children living with single mothers and the rate of unmarried parents both tripled.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-192.html
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents/

Divorce rates skyrocketed while marriage rates plummeted. Again divorce rates began to drop in the 80’s but only because marriages decreased sodramatically. So again this is a sign of the problem getting worse not better.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Marriage-and-Divorce-Rate-United-States-1969-1990_fig1_237282604

Not only marriages but all relationships are breaking down.
https://www.clearvuehealth.com/b/social-isolation-statistics/

Suicide rates are so great now that the average life expectancy has dropped 3 years as a result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html

Alcohol use. Again we see a decline in the 90’s. Why? Drug use.
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh27-1/30-38.htm
https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/enforce.cfm
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomaspellechia/2018/01/22/alcohol-sales-dropped-15-percent-in-states-with-medical-marijuana-laws/#71eab8525f22

As has already been stated, Communism is an outgrowth of evolution. Thus, it should not be surprising that the fruit of introducing evolution in schools was more government and more government-control.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/02/13/ten-questions-and-answers-about-americas-big-government/

Pornography use boomed in the 1960’s and is still increasing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography

On the other hand, the ideas of capitalism (Gal 6:7, 2 Cor 9:6, Job 4:8, Pro 22:8, Pro 11:18, Hos 10:12, Pro 1:31), separation of powers (Isa 33:22), election of representatives (Deut 1:13), freedom of speech (2 Sam 16:10), and right to bear arms (1 Sam 25:13, Exo 22:2, Luke 22:36, Neh 4:16-18, 1 Sam 13:19, 2 Kin11:4-16) were literally implemented due to a literal interpretation of the Bible. It has been said that God always says the most important thing first. We can see this with the creation week and how possibly everything we believe is based on the creation week. But is the theory of evolution false? This is a good starting answer. The theory of evolution contradicts 3 laws: Law of bio genesis = Life cannot come from non-life, Law of first thermodynamics = energy and therefore matter cannot be created or destroyed, and Law of second thermodynamics = everything is always moving from order to disorder. The theory of evolution says that the universe has disobeyed this last law not just one time, but everything has been moving to a state of more order constantly for 4.5 billion years on earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogenesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics

 The Bible has a lot to say about money, riches, and wealth, especially in the Proverbs.  It is a shame more Christians don’t avail themselves to what the Bible says about it; they could save themselves much grief and gain much wisdom concerning it.  

My purpose here is not to do an exhaustive study on money in the Scriptures as that would take a full-sized book.  Rather my purpose is to give some balance to what the Bible teaches about money.  I have simply chosen 10 Scriptures that speak positively about money and wealth and 10 Scriptures that speak negatively about money and wealth as a sampling out of the many Scriptures the Bible contains on the subject.  What I find striking about these two groups of Scriptures is that the positive ones are very positive and negatives are very negative.  It is one of those areas that detractors from the Bible could seemingly, justifiably cry that it contradicts itself.

I went to a “prosperity church” for a few years, and I only heard Scriptures from this first list:

Positive Scriptures About Money

Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold
(Gen. 13:2 NKJV).

And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day
(Deut. 8:18 NKJV).

Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers
(Deut. 30:5-6 NKJV).

Wealth and riches will be in his house,
And his righteousness endures forever
(Psalms 112:3 NKJV).

He who has a slack hand becomes poor,
But the hand of the diligent makes rich
(Prov. 10:4 NKJV).

The blessing of the Lord makes one rich,
And He adds no sorrow with it
(Prov. 10:22 NKJV).

The generous soul will be made rich,
And he who waters will also be watered himself
(Prov. 11:25 NKJV).

Because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you
(Isaiah 60:5 NKJV).

The Lord was with him; he prospered wherever he went
(2 Kings 18:7 NKJV).

Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers
(3 John 1:2 NKJV).

I never heard any negative Scriptures from the Bible being quoted although I knew many of them existed, such as from this list:

Negative Scriptures About Money

There is one who makes himself rich, yet has nothing; And one who makes himself poor, yet has great riches
(Prov. 13:7 NKJV).

Do not overwork to be rich;
Because of your own understanding, cease!
(Prov. 23:4 NKJV).

A faithful man will abound with blessings,
But he who hastens to be rich will not go unpunished
(Prov. 28:20 NKJV).        

And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God
(Matt. 19:24 NKJV).

 But woe to you who are rich, For you have received your consolation
(Luke 6:24 NKJV).

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition
(1 Tim. 6:9 NKJV).

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows
(1 Tim. 6:10 NKJV).

For a bishop must be blameless, as a steward of God, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money
(Titus 1:7 NKJV).

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!  Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.  Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire.  You have heaped up treasure in the last days
(James 5:1-3 NKJV).

Because you say, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing”–and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked
(Rev. 3:17 NKJV).

Clearly the Bible has both good and bad things to say about money, wealth and being rich.  So where is the balance?  If a church just teaches on the positive Scriptures about money and not the negative ones, clearly that church is not teaching the “whole counsel of God,” (Acts 20:27), and they are severely out of balance, if not in outright deception.

I have noticed something in the Bible over the years that helps me to reconcile the two above lists of Scriptures.  Clearly, riches and wealth were definitely a reward for the righteous in the Old Testament, but that is not so clear in the New Testament.  In fact, the nature of riches in the New Testament seems to be spiritual rather than natural, which helps explain why the New Testament has little to commend about natural riches and money.  

Jesus said, “Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”  (Luke 16:11 NKJV).  Here Jesus seems to be comparing natural riches with spiritual riches.

He also said, Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Luke 12:33-34 NKJV).  This is the same thing He said to the rich young ruler that I have always heard preached that he had a problem with money and that is why Jesus said this to him.  Here however, he is speaking generally to His disciples.  I have never heard a sermon or teaching on this verse!

Paul said,   “Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:15-18 NKJV).  Here Paul is praying their eyes may be open to the true riches of “the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”  Obviously this is spiritual riches.

He also said, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (Romans 11:33 NKJV).  Here Paul is calling riches the “wisdom and knowledge of God.”

While it is not wrong to be rich in the New Testament, we are given several warnings about the deceitfulness of wealth including from Jesus Himself.  It is a matter of our attitude about it and  what we do with it.  

I am a painter by trade.  I mainly work for wealthy people, and I am in many homes of very rich people every year.  Usually we spend an average of about a week in these houses, both Christian and non-Christian.  When you spend that much time in someone’s home you get a feel for what they value and where their hearts are.  I can say that most are very deceived by their riches.  As for most wealthy Christians, I see they lavish their wealth on themselves as much as the non- Christians rather than on the kingdom of God, which is a major reason for seeking wealth according to the prosperity teachers.  I also find that many of the most wealthy customers are also the most selfish and self-centered.  

A wise man prayed one time in the Proverbs,

Remove falsehood and lies far from me;
Give me neither poverty nor riches--
Feed me with the food allotted to me;
Lest I be full and deny You,
And say, "Who is the Lord?"
Or lest I be poor and steal,
And profane the name of my God
(Prov. 30:8-9 NKJV).

I have shared on a few of my blogs how the Lord led me to take off from work and just seek Him.  I did not know how long that period would last at the time.  I have previously had two periods that He commanded me not to work and seek Him that lasted a couple of years.  So I was hoping this time it would just be a couple of years.  It turned out to last 12 years.  

During that time He met all of our needs.  I did not have any house church meeting during that time as I had previously, nor did I go to churches or watch TV ministries.  I would still listen to preachers on the radio if I was driving, but for the most part I was cut off from the work, world, the social world and even the church world except for my wife and son who were benefiting from all of my study and seeking.

When that “sabbatical,” as I called it was up, I went back to work.  That was about 2 years ago.  Since I no longer had any church meetings at my house, I ended up going to a prosperity church until I started a house church again.  I won’t bore you with how I ended up going to that church.  I had never been to a prosperity church or listened to any of those preachers on TV because I didn’t trust them.  The pastor is a good man, and I was able to receive a few things from him even though he avoided most negative Scriptures like most of the prosperity preachers.  I think most of them have about 50% false doctrine, which I will explain latter in this article.

I noticed a trend when I came back into the world and church scene after that 12-year sabbatical.  It seemed most preachers or pastors were preaching from only one set of Scriptures— the positive about God’s love and grace such as the following list:

So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good?  No one is good but One, that is, God.”
Mark 10:18 (NKJV)

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16 (NKJV)

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
John 3:17 (NKJV)

Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
Romans 2:4 (NKJV)

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (NKJV)
        
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
Romans 6:10 (NKJV)


Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.
James 1:17 (NKJV)
            
He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
1 John 4:8 (NKJV)

I also noticed most preachers I was hearing on TV, internet, and even radio were almost totally ignoring any Scriptures that had to do with God’s judgment, wrath, or anger.  One pastor I heard went so far as to say that all Scriptures in the New Testament that speak of God’s judgment or wrath are concerning the future and not the present.  When I searched that out in the Greek tenses, I found it not to be true.  For example, many preachers avoid Scriptures from the following list:

But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!  Luke 12:5 (NKJV)

"I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”  Luke 12:49 (NKJV)

“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. John 3:18 (NKJV)

“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." John 3:36 (NKJV)

And Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind." John 9:39 (NKJV)  

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. Romans 12:19 (NKJV)

that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
2 Cor. 5:19 (NKJV)

among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
Eph. 2:3 (NKJV)

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Eph. 5:6 (NKJV)

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.  Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?  For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. And again, "The Lord will judge His people."  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Heb. 10:26-31 (NKJV)

For our God is a consuming fire. Heb. 12:29 (NKJV)

Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off.   Romans 11:22 (NKJV)

The above verse says let us consider the goodness AND severity of God.  Most today leave out the severity part because it is unpleasant.  This is why I say many prosperity preachers have about 50% false doctrine: not necessarily because they are not preaching from the Bible, but because they only use the positive list of Scriptures and not the negative ones.  This is true for many of the preachers I have heard since my time in seclusion.   No doubt many preachers have done this for decades, but I just never noticed it so sharply until after that 12-year period.  These types of preachers have been dubbed “hyper-grace” preachers and teachers, which I think is a good description.  Therefore, I am going to do some articles on balance.  This is the first of that series.  Grace and love are part of the nature of God--but He is also a God of judgment, wrath, anger and severity. When preachers and teachers just teach only the positive attributes of the nature of God, they have created a god in an image that they wish and not the image that the Bible portrays.  They have created an idol.

I have also noticed that the hyper-grace movement seems to lead to two major false doctrines.  One is Once Saved Always Saved and the other is Ultimate Reconciliation (which I call Ultimate Wreck) where everyone in the end gets saved .  It does not take much of an imagination to see why the hyper-grace movement leads to these two doctrines of hell.  How many will end up in hell because of the hyper-grace movement and they have only heard of a God of love, grace and forgiveness?    

I was talking with a friend recently, and he seemed to be describing my life.  He bought a semi- tractor and became a trucker.  He makes very good money from his hauls; but he said every time he gets some money saved up, something happens to take it all away.  He gave an example of having to replace five tires in one week that cost about $1000 each. That seems to describe most of my life.  We both go to a church that teaches prosperity, have striven to implement biblical principles into our lives concerning prosperity, and believe God wants to prosper his people.  Yet for us and probably for most Christians our view of prosperity seems to elude us.
Yet we both had to acknowledge that we have what we need when we need it.

Jesus said,

“Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'  For after all these things the Gentiles seek.  For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:31-33 NKJV).

There could be many reasons for a Christian not prospering, such as sin in one’s life.  The Proverbs say,

He who covers his sins will not prosper,
But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy
(Prov. 28:13 NKJV).

I don’t believe I have any more sin in my life than most of the Christians I know, who are prospering way beyond what they need.  I have concluded that for me, it is because the Lord wants me to keep seeking Him and be totally dependent upon Him in all situations.  It is living by faith.  I don’t have an abundance, but I do have what I need when I need it by faith.  

Jesus also said,

“Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15 NKJV).


It is comforting to me that Paul, who seems to be the most saintly person in the Bible–excluding Jesus–seemed to have the same “just what you need” prosperity my friend and I have.  Actually, he was many times in worst need than I have ever been–and that while constantly risking his life to preach the Gospel.  We cannot blame his lack of prosperity on sin in his life.  Paul said,

“. . .  men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.  From such withdraw yourself.  Now godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.  And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.  But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Tim. 6:5-10 NKJV).

I have heard many preachers who were doing just what Paul warned against:  teaching godliness was a means of material prosperity.  It seemed like their goal in life was to become rich using biblical principles and milking their flock for all they could get.  Like the scriptures say,

Thus says the Lord my God, "Feed the flock for slaughter, whose owners slaughter them and feel no guilt; those who sell them say, 'Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich'; and their shepherds do not pity them” (Zech. 11:4-5 NKJV).

They never seem to be content with what they have; they always want more.  They build great empires and name ministries after their own names.

Their inner thought is that their houses will last forever, their dwelling places to all generations;
They call their lands after their own names (Ps. 49:11 NKJV).

But if I am honest, I too want more prosperity than what I have so far experienced.  In the U.S. according to my income, I would be considered poor.  However, I know I have more than about 80% of the population of the world, and they would consider me rich.  I have not totally learned Paul’s secret yet.

“Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances.  I  know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.   I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:11-13 NASB).

The Greek word for “secret” here is interesting.  It is mueo and means “to initiate into mysteries.”  It is from the root word musterion, which is where we get the word “mystery.”  Strong’s and other dictionaries say it means:

“a hidden thing, secret, mystery, religious secrets only to the initiated and not to ordinary mortals”

Obviously many prosperity teachers have not been initiated into this secret that Paul learned about being content.  What was this “secret” Paul learned?  I don’t know for sure, but I have some ideas based on Paul’s writings.

1.  Paul kept his eyes on the prize.

“. . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.  Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:10-14 NKJV).

2.  Paul found joy in sacrificing himself for others.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy (Phil. 1:3-4 NKJV).

3.  Paul found comfort in the Lord’s presence.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4 NKJV).

What is somewhat troubling is that Paul exhorted Christians to imitate him.  Paul told the Corinthians,

“Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1 NKJV).

Who would want to imitate Paul, who was imitating Christ?  Would we not much rather imitate the prosperity teachers who get rich off the Gospel?  The prosperity teachers point to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who all got rich following God.  However, I have talked with some of these teachers and tried to use Old Testament examples for other doctrines; but if they don’t like the doctrine, they simply say the Old Testament examples don’t apply for New Testament people.  But if they like the doctrine, the Old Testament examples are to be imitated even over Paul’s example.

The Old Testament priests did not get an inheritance of land.  

Then the Lord said to Aaron: "You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor shall you have any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel” (Num. 18:20 NKJV).

What a wonderful inheritance–God Himself!  Is not this the inheritance of the New Testament priests?

In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11 NKJV).

If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us.
(2 Tim. 2:12 NKJV).

One thing Paul made clear was that we are not to seek after getting rich.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition (1 Tim. 6:9 NKJV).    

The Proverbs say something similar,

Weary not thyself to be rich; Cease from thine own wisdom (Prov. 23:4 ASV).

Neither do the Scriptures teach us to reject riches if God decides to allow us to have them.  We would all do well to strive to learn Paul’s secret of being content in all situations.  “Godliness with contentment is great gain.”

I want to look at the Bible concept of people being tested here.  It is really a foreign thought today especially when it comes to qualifications for leadership.  I suppose at least one reason it is so ignored today—besides the unpleasant thought of being tested in today’s western hedonistic culture—is that some of the Hebrew and Greek words that can be translated “test” of “trial” can also mean “tempt.”  While God certainly tests His people, He does not tempt them.

“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone” (James 1:13 NKJV).

Moses said the terrifying thunder, lightning, and fire of Mt. Sinai was to test the Israelites.

“And Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear; for God has come to test you, that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin’” (Ex. 20:20 NKJV).

Moses said, speaking of God, “who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end” (Deut. 8:16 NKJV).

The Hebrew word here used for “test” is nasah.  Strong’s Concordance says about it,

“A primitive root: to test; by implication to attempt; - advernture, assay, prove, tempt, try.”

Notice it can mean “tempt” but does not in these verses since God does not tempt us.

Being tested is not just an Old Testament concept but carries over into the New Testament.

“Blessed is the man who endures temptation: for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:12
 NKJV).

The Greek word translated “temptation” here is peirasmos which can mean trial or tried.  The word translated “approved” is dokimos and can be translated “tried.”

Christians are supposed to test their disciples before approving them.  Paul said about Titus,

“We have sent with them our brother, whom we have often tested and found diligent in many things, but now even more diligent because of his great confidence in you” (2 Cor. 8:22 NASB).

The church in the West usually does not make disciples anymore much less test them.

Paul, said about deacons that they must be “tested.”

“But let these also first be tested; then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless”
(1 Tim 3:10 NKJV).

So biblically both deacons and elders are to be tested and meet certain qualifications.  We might ask ourselves the question—although no one ever does—why does it not say pastors must be tested and meet certain qualifications?  I have written about this before so I will not belabor the point here.  “Pastor” is a totally made-up man-invented position.  Biblically it is simply used as a metaphor for elders.  Did you know you cannot make an official position out of a metaphor?  It is actually impossible.  Neither do most so-called “pastors”!  If someone has (metaphorically speaking) a “pastor’s heart,” that means they actually want to spend time with the flock.  Most so-called pastors I have met do not want to spend any time with the flock like Jesus and Paul did.  They only want to preach to them.  

Years ago I wrote my first book (now out of print) about going through seven steps on our journey to maturity.  It was based on Ezekiel’s temple.  I have to admit I had a very immature revelation of those seven steps when I wrote the book.  The fifth step in Ezekiel’s temple is the altar of sacrifice in the center of the temple complex.  

Since I wrote that book, the Lord has been leading me on a prophetic journey through Ezekiel’s temple complex.  Recently, while in a time of prayer and fasting, the Lord revealed to me that I had completed that step in my personal life.  Prophetically going through that altar of fire is very much a time of testing like the Israelites’ time at the mountain of fire.  During that time He would not allow me to work. It lasted for 12 years!  All of our savings got burned up in that altar of fire and time of testing.  All of my spiritual goals and dreams also got burned up during that time even as Abraham’s dreams of children were almost burned up when he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac on his altar.

Now I am having to live out these steps emphatically for the purpose of future teaching, so my time of being tested by that spiritual fire and altar may be more extreme than yours.  God deals with each of us differently.  I now know about that step experientially instead of just theoretically.  Although I did not know I was going into that altar at the time, I can tell you neither I nor my wife wanted to embark on that faith journey with no paychecks.  Neither did anyone help us financially during that time.  God alone sustained us.  The only thing I got from the church in all of that 12 years was the verse “If you don’t work, then you don’t eat.”  We never asked anyone for anything during that time, nor did we ever express our needs to anyone.  It was certainly a test of obedience as God said about the Israelites,

“You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not” (Deut. 8:2 NKJV).

At one time during this time we were staying at a time-share mountain house we had (we lost that going through the altar too), and everything seemed to be prophetic of Mt. Sinai.  On the real Mt. Sinai the Israelites heard the trumpet, thunder, and saw lightning and the mountain on fire.  For us there was fog on the mountains all around us, and the mountains looked like they were on fire.  The wind blew fiercely causing the motion detector lights to keep flashing like lightning.  The fire alarm went off in the house, and I had a very difficult time turning it off.  The alarm in my car went off as well.  

The strangest thing that happened that weekend was when my son and I went into town and on the way back into the wilderness, we picked up an old man hitchhiking.  He reminded me of Moses.  He had a long white beard and was carrying a huge black book that looked like a very old Bible.  He kept his head buried in that book the whole time he was with us.  He didn’t talk much; but when we started to come into the mountains, he suddenly blurted out, “I saw the mountain on fire.”  I pointed to the mountains and said, “Do you mean these mountains?”   He simply said, “No.  You can’t see that mountain from here.”  Then he stuck his nose back in the huge book again.  

I told him I would take him wherever he was going, but he insisted I let him off at a little country store before the road that went to our cabin.  He said that his friends would take him home.  I had been in the little store several times and knew it was run by a man who lived at the house there.  I knew he could not shut down the store to take this guy home.  So I wondered who these friends of his were.  At the time I considered our cabin to be like our own little promise land in the wilderness.  The Moses-like man acted like he had to get out of our car before we got to our promised land.

I had asked him before where he lived; and he only said, “Seven miles to the west.”  Later when I looked at a map, I saw that seven miles to the west was deep into the George Washington National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia; and there was no houses in there.  Nor were there any roads that went seven miles west into it.  I told him I lived off the next road; and he said to me, “Do you mean the one with the Green roof?”  I said “Yes,” but I wondered how he would know that since you could not even see the cabin from the road.  

Later, when we went back to the place where I picked up the Moses-like man, I found it was on Mt. Sinai Rd. in front of Mt. Sinai Church.  I am convinced he was really Moses that God sent down for a prophetic visit for us, or he was an angel pretending to be Moses.  Either way, God was confirming I was at the mountain of prophetic fire during my time of testing at the altar of fire.

John the Baptist said,

“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt. 3:11 NKJV).

In the future the church will only have leaders who have been tested by the baptism of fire.  They will be the only ones who will be able to withstand the heat that is coming to the church.  Today, anyone can just proclaim himself a pastor without so much as the qualifications for a deacon and begin to receive tithes from the sheep.  That will not continue when the Lord begins to purify his church.  Incidently, the word “purify” is from the Greek word for “fire,” pur.  

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is certainly not the “full” gospel.  There are more steps after that, and the next one after it is the baptism of fire.

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love” (1 Peter 1:6-8 NKJV).

"1 My son, keep my words, And treasure my commands within you.  2 Keep my commands and live, And my law as the apple of your eye.  3 Bind them on your fingers;  Write them on the tablet of your heart.  4 Say to wisdom, 'You are my sister,'  And call understanding your nearest kin,  5 That they may keep you from the immoral woman,  From the seductress who flatters with her words.  6 For at the window of my house I looked through my lattice, 7 And saw among the simple,  perceived among the youths, A young man devoid of understanding.  8 Passing along the street near her corner; And he took the path to her house.  9 In the twilight, in the evening, In the black and dark night.  10 And there a woman met him, With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart. 11 She was loud and rebellious, Her feet would not stay at home.  12 At times she was outside, at times in the open square, Lurking at every corner.  13 So she caught him and kissed him; With an impudent face she said to him:  14 'I have peace offerings with me; Today I have paid my vows.  15 So I came out to meet you, Diligently to seek your face, And I have found you.  16 I have spread my bed with tapestry, Colored coverings of Egyptian linen.  17 I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.  18 Come, let us take our fill of love until morning; Let us delight ourselves with love.  19 For my husband is not at home; He has gone on a long journey; 20 He has taken a bag of money with him, and will come home on the appointed day.'  21 With her enticing speech she caused him to yield, with her flattering lips she seduced him.  22 Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, Or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, 23 Till an arrow struck his liver.  As a bird hastens to the snare, He did not know it would cost his life.  24 Now therefore, listen to me, my children; Pay attention to the words of my mouth:  25 Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, Do not stray into her paths; 26 For she has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men.  27 Her house is the way to hell, descending to the chambers of death” (Prov. 7:1-27 NKJV).

Years ago as I was reading this chapter of Proverbs, the thought came to me that it was not talking of a literal harlot but rather the churches, most of which are harlots to God.  Every time I have read it since, I have become even more convinced that it was speaking of the churches seducing simple-minded people and in many cases indoctrinating them with false doctrines and usurping the headship of Christ in their lives— to the point of sending them to hell—all in the name of religion.  

It is contrasting the woman wisdom (not a literal woman), who is the Holy Spirit, with the harlot woman (not a literal woman), who represents many churches.  Another way I could say it is that it is contrasting a real relationship with the Lord with a relationship with a church and religion.  The first leads to heaven, the second to “the chambers of death” (v. 27).  Christ came to begin a relationship, not a religion.  It is really quite a sobering thought:  Many think their religion or relationship with a church will save them, when it may be condemning them to hell.

I could use my own family and myself as an example.  My mother came from a big Roman Catholic Italian family.  She took me and my sister to church as little kids.  I’m sure she thought she and we were saved because we had religion and were going to church.  However, I didn’t actually get saved till I was 24 years old in a Protestant church.   Now I am not picking on the Catholic church even though I am sure many who go to it are not really saved.  The same is true for the Protestant churches.  

In Prov. 7 the harlot is religious:   “I have peace offerings with me; Today I have paid my vows.  So I came out to meet you, Diligently to seek your face, And I have found you” (vs. 14-15).  Her “husband”  has gone on a long journey—just like the Lord .  “For my husband is not at home; He has gone on a long journey; He has taken a bag of money with him” (v. 19).  The parables speak of the kingdom of Jesus as a man going on a journey,

“For  it will be like a man  going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property” (Matt.  25:14 ESV).

“It is like a man  going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge,  each with his work, and commands  the doorkeeper to stay awake” (Mark 13:34 ESV).

The bag of money He took with Him (Pr. 7:19) was the price for our redemption.  In the Hebrew the word for "money" is “silver.”  In the Scriptures silver represents redemption.  Clearly the man who went on a journey in Prov. 7 is none other than the Lord Jesus.  Thus, the unfaithful wife must be His church.  

It says that the immoral woman seduces with her “words,”  Say to wisdom, "You are my sister,"  And call understanding your nearest kin,  That they may keep you from the immoral woman,  From the seductress who flatters with her words” (vs. 4-5).  Literal harlots don’t usually seduce with “words” but rather by the way they dress.  They don’t have to say much.  Churches, however, are all about “words,” doctrines, creeds, sermons, songs, etc.  In fact, most churches I have been in are rarely silent long enough to even pray for 5 minutes– even though God says in the Bible, “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7 ESV).  Today, churches are not known as houses of prayer but rather houses of “words” or sermons.

Verse 12 says the seductress was lurking at “every corner.”  I have lived in the Richmond area for decades; and although I have heard there are prostitutes in town and have even seen police stings on the news, to my knowledge I have never actually seen a prostitute on any corner or anywhere else in my travels.  However, on many, many corners all over town, I see churches with signs out front trying to lure people inside—sometimes with very witty words on their marquees.

Proverbs 7 says, “So I came out to meet you, Diligently to seek your face, And I have found you.  I have spread my bed with tapestry, Colored coverings of Egyptian linen.  I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.  Come, let us take our fill of love until morning;  Let us delight ourselves with love”  (vs. 16-18).  This speaks of the efforts that religion and churches go through to make the buildings more alluring and comfortable to lure converts in.  To take “our fill of love till morning” is not talking about a relationship of love with the Lord or the fellowship of love among believers, which is rarely seen in churches, but rather a love relationship with the church itself who has usurped the place of the Lord for many.  The church is meant to lead people in a love relationship with Jesus, not the church system itself and not religion.  Many pastors speak of their church as “their church” because that is what it is.  It is not the Lord’s church.  They have usurped Christ’s place as head.  So if the people are not in love with all the comforts and programs of the church, they are in an inordinate love relationship with the pastor —a man.  I have already written a book about what the church should be like—patterned after Ezekiel’s temple.  In it I make the case that the very position of pastor (shepherd) is a false man-made position.  It’s a metaphor, not a reality!  You cannot make an actual position out of a metaphor any more than the pew warmers can become actual sheep— hello, church.  Did anyone ever learn what a metaphor was in English class?   How about instead of "pastor" we make an actual position out of the metaphor “bridegroom.”  Then your wife can say, “This is my 'bridegroom,' instead of “pastor.”  You have just as much scriptural authority to use the metaphor "bridegroom" as a real position as "pastor"— absolutely none.  It’s impossible except in the figment of people’s imaginations.  “ Pastors” is a metaphor for a body of elders.  It is never found in the New Testament in the singular except referring to Christ.   God never intended a one-man show!  A one-man show cannot help but usurp the headship of Christ.

“ And he took the path to her house.  In the twilight, in the evening, In the black and dark night.   And there a woman met him, With the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart” (vs. 8b-10).  Jesus said He was the light of the world, not a religion of man.  "Jesus answered,  'Are there not twelve hours in the day?  If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.  But  if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not  in him'” (John 11:9-10 ESV).

Night implies darkened understanding like the simple young man devoid of understanding.  He is simple because he has never sought the Lord himself and studied the Bible for himself or fasted and prayed for the Holy Spirit to give understanding.  He represents people who only get fed from the harlot church once a week in the darkness of man’s false doctrines.  The harlot is a Jezebel.  Most churches are not a servant but want people to exalt and serve her pleasures and give her love offerings to keep the machine of religion running— not for the benefit of the people, but for the church itself to perpetuate her harlotries.   She thinks she is doing good for the victims while damning many to the “chambers of hell.”

So what do we do about going to church?  I am not saying we should stop going to church unless we know it is teaching false doctrines.  We have nothing else in place at this point.  This is what I will say:  If all your spiritual life consists of is going to church, you are essentially married to the harlot instead of Christ.  Going to church for a couple hours on a Sunday should be a very small part of your weekly spiritual experience.  We should be seeking the Lord daily every morning and evening and in between because we want to marry Him.  If the church takes that place in your life, you are one of the simple ones Proverbs is speaking about.  If all your spiritual life consists of is going to church on Sunday, you don’t have a relationship with Jesus and may not even be saved.  We should go to a church that we think has sincere motives to hear the word; worship corporately; find at least some fellowship; and if we have any opportunity, to exercise our own gifts for the people.  If church has usurped the headship of Christ in your life, the harlot has seduced you; and you may wind up in the “chambers of hell.”

Three Days
Three Days and Three Nights in the Tomb?

I continue to meet people who advocate that Jesus spent a literal three days and three nights in the tomb.  One problem with this is for that to be taken as a literal three days and nights, it would make Jesus’ resurrection happen on the fourth day and on a Saturday.  It goes against about 20 Scriptures that clearly say Jesus would or did resurrect on the third day.  I have read several studies on this and some are 20 pages long.  I will try to condense this article into four  pages with the crucial information.  These people’s argument is from one verse,

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matt 12:40 NKJV).

First, I would like to point out that virtually all of the early church fathers who wrote on the subject say Jesus died on a Friday (what the Jews called “preparation day”), spent the Sabbath in the tomb, and resurrected early on Sunday.  Of particular interest is what Ignatius, a disciple of the apostle John, wrote in a letter,

    “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man also be three days and    three nights in the heart of the earth.”  The day of the preparation, then comprises the passion; the Sabbath embraces the burial; the Lord’s Day contains the resurrection.
    (Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians, Chapter 9)

Second, it is fairly well-known that the Jewish writers would count a part of a day or night as whole days and nights such as can seen in the book of Esther,

"Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!" (Est. 4:16).

If they fasted for a whole three days and nights, Esther would have gone to the king on the forth day.  Instead she went on the third day,

Now it happened on the third day that Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the king's palace, across from the king's house, while the king sat on his royal throne in the royal house, facing the entrance of the house (Est. 5:1 NKJV).

A lot of the controversy over the days of the crucifixion come from the book of John whose chronology seems to be a day earlier than the Synoptic Gospels.  One of these verses is

Then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium, and it was early morning. But they themselves did not go into the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover (John 18:28 NKJV).

If the high priests had not eaten the Passover yet, then it must not be Passover yet, right?  And if it was not yet the Passover, what did Jesus eat that He called the Passover?  Whenever I run into a perceived  controversy between something Jesus said and something one of the other Bible writers said, I take what Jesus said as higher priority.  Surprisingly, most commentators do just the opposite and say Jesus really didn’t eat the Passover, even though He said He did,

Then He said to them, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God" (Luke 22:15-16 NKJV).

So who was right, Jesus or John?  They are both right.  If Jesus said He ate the Passover, then that is what He ate.  The fact is that Thursday night began the Passover on the 14th of the month, which continued to the next day (Friday the preparation day for the sabbath).  In the Bible the new day always began at sundown the night before.  So when John said the high priests did not want to defile themselves so they could eat the Passover the next day, it was still Passover day.  This was the day when all the special sacrifices at the temple were done for Passover, while the night before was the actual Passover meal.  It was required for the Old Testament Jews to bring other sacrifices to the temple such as the peace or free-will offerings,

Three times a year shall all your males appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths. They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed:  Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you (Duet. 16:16-17 AMP, underline mine).

It was the eating of the freewill offering to which John was referring.  The Jewish Christian and  Hebrew, Greek and Talmudic scholar, Alfred Edersheim, explains that after the morning sacrifices of the temple were completed on Passover, the people brought their free-will offerings, also called festival offerings or Chagigah in Hebrew,

    And now the ordinary morning service was over, and the festive sacrifices were offered.  It only remained to bring the private burnt-offerings, and to sacrifice the Chagigah* which they must offer in the festive meal that would afterwards ensue.  And so the strangest contradiction was enacted.  They who had not hesitated to break every law of God’s and of their own making, would not enter the Praetorium, lest they should be defiled and prevented from the Chagigah!  Surely, the logic of inconsistency could go no further in punctiliously observing the letter and violating the spirit of the law.
    * The evidence that the expression in John 18:28, “They went not into the judgement hall . . .that they might eat the Passover,” refers not to the Paschal lamb, but to the Chagigah . . .
    The Temple: Its Ministry and Services, Eerdmans, 1988, p.255.

Another controversy surrounding the chronology of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection is that John calls the day Jesus was crucified, “the preparation day.”

Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, "Behold your King!"  But they cried out, "Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar!"  Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus and led Him away (John 19:14-16 NKJV, underline mine).

The phrase “Preparation Day of the Passover” at first makes one think that the Passover had not yet come.  It could have been the preparation day of the festival Sabbath of Passover instead of the weekly Sabbath.  So we are right back to wondering what Jesus ate that He called the “Passover.”  

Furthermore, there was an ongoing debate between the Pharisees and Sadducees on the law of the first fruits offering,

He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it (Lev. 23:11 NKJV).

Was this speaking of the weekly Sabbath or the festival Sabbath also called a “high Sabbath”?  Fortunately for us, the Scriptures tell us this particular Sabbath was both,

Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away (John 19:31 NKJV, underline mine).

This particular weekly Sabbath was also a high holy day Sabbath—the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  So while John causes some controversy, he also clarifies some things such as this.  The reason he called it the Preparation Day of the Passover is easily solved when we understand that the Jews also called the week long Feast of Unleavened Bread “Passover” or “Passover week.”  In other words they used the two phrases interchangeably.  John was referring to the weekly Sabbath of the Passover week.

So Jesus ate the Passover with everyone else on Passover night, the 14th (Thursday night),

Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it (Ex. 12:8-9 NKJV, underline mine).

The next day (Friday) was still the 14th, Passover day when Christ was crucified.  Then He was placed in the tomb shortly before the weekly Sabbath began at sundown, which began the Sabbath or Saturday.  That evening also began the 15th day of the month.  The fifteenth was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened bread.  

He rose on Sunday the 16th, which was the day of the Feast of Firstfruits,

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Cor. 15:20 NKJV).

The Friday crucifixion and Sunday resurrection is the only chronology that fits the types portrayed in the Feasts.  If He spent three days and three nights in the tomb (72 hrs.), then He would have had to be crucified on a Wednesday, which would not fit the types of the festivals of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Fristfruits.

Another problem with Him spending 72 hours in the tomb is you have to interpret the tomb, which we know to be hewn out of the side of a cliff, as the “heart of the earth.”  We do know that Jesus went to Sheol to preach to those there, and that could be considered “the heart of the earth”; but He could not have spent three days and nights there as He Himself told the thief on the cross, “Today you will be in Paradise with me.”  Paradise was is heaven not in Sheol.

So what did Jesus really mean by three days and three nights in the heart of the earth?  Psalm 74 says,

 For God is my King from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth (Ps. 74:12 NKJV).

The phrase “heart of the earth” is interchangeable with “midst of the earth.”  The word for “salvation” in this verse is Yeshua, the Hebrew name for Jesus.  It is telling us Jesus is working salvation in the heart of the earth.  Jesus says He will be doing this for three days.  Peter tells us

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.  The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us (2 Peter 3:8-9 NKJV).

In other words Jesus was telling us in Matt. 12:40 that He would be working salvation in the heart of the earth for three millennial days.  The heart of the earth is our hearts,

Do not let your adornment be merely outward--arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel— rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God (1 Peter 3:3-4 NKJV, underline mine).

The great fish vomiting Jonah out of its mouth was a type of resurrection.  After the third millennial day from the resurrection of Christ, the book of Revelation tells us the second resurrection will occur and all people left on earth will be believers, not needing salvation.  Thus, as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, the Son of Man will be in the midst of the earth working salvation for three thousand years.  There is no need to ignore the 20 some Scriptures that speak of a third-day resurrection for the sake of one verse.