Gerhold L. Lemke – gllemke@hotmail.com
God’s Creation of everything from nothing is Bible Truth (Genesis 1:1, Hebrews 11:3). Creation of all life could only be the work of our living God. When I believe this, I am a proper Creationist, wanting all people to trust in Jesus (John 1:1-5), the Son of our living God (Matthew 16:16). So I can confess with Dr. Martin Luther, in the First Article of The Apostles’ Creed, “Ich glaube an Gott den Vater almaechtigen, Schoepfer Himmels und der Erde.” (Kirchenbuch fuer Evangelisch-Lutherische Gemeinden, Chicago, 1906, Wartburg.) After Dr. Luther’s “Was ist das?” we confess that God has made us “samt allen Kreaturen” – “with all creatures” – the German zusammen mit meaning “together with.” In 1906, there’s not a hint of recent decades of ReCreationist teaching.
For a comprehensive, informative “map” of where everybody is at, go to: creationism wiki. History is silent on who first saw fossils in Earth’s rock record as being “evidence” for or “proof” of the Flood of Genesis 6-8. It would be quite “natural” to think this. But how wouldn’t that be a “walk by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7) — or even against sight, if, today, we find so many good reasons to ask: “Was this really Flood-deposited?”? Dr. Charles P. Arand of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, has written everything that you should want to know in: “A Travel Guide to the Evangelical Creation Debates: What Is Young Earth Creationism?” Find this at: arand travel guide creation feb. 23, 2018. He mentions E. G. White, G. M. Price, and the works of some LCMS creationists.
“For the entire surface of the earth was changed.” Dr. Arand gives us this and several other quotes from Luther’s 1535-1545 Genesis Commentary. (See also: martin luther genesis commentary, for what you can read for profit.) If, today, you agree that “Nobody can know what our Earth was like before God’s Flood,” you are a ReCreationist. I’m not. The big difference between now and the days of Dr. Luther is that now we know how created “Laws of Nature” would have limited what God’s Flood – operating on its own – could or could not have accomplished. As I see it, the Liberal vs. Conservative chasm dividing Lutherans today is – to some significant degree – a result of many informed people telling ReCreationists: “God’s Flood did not do what you say!”
“The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1. See Romans 1:20.) God’s Creation miracle has resulted in the fact that we can see a work of God. But Scripture gives us no reason to claim that “real evidence” (a legal term) for God’s Flood miracle should be seen anywhere today. Jesus gave doubting Thomas tangible evidence for his Resurrection miracle (John 20:27), but since then we have the Word (2 Peter 1:16-18). “Test everything” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) applies exactly to the ReCreationist claim that there is proof everywhere for the miracle of God’s Flood. How does 2 Peter 3:5-7 support this, when 3:5 & 7a give us ge for “geology,” while 3:6 & 7b point out a “world” of people going down – kosmos – as in 2 Peter 2:5 & 20, and John 3:16?
In April, 2019, God gave us a great “Test” for the ReCreationist claim that the Chicxulub Impact ending secular “dinosaur time” happened maybe a short time before Noah’s Ark ran aground 150 days into the Flood. Find it at: robert depalma tanis. Look for a National Geographic article to report every detail of an ordinary day in what is now SW North Dakota – when, in less than a day, “business as usual” was wiped out. If this was maybe Day 140 of God’s Flood covering everything right then, what about all the Paleozoic strata “deposited” first, below DePalma’s “Tanis” site? At AiG on April 8, Dr. Andrew Snelling called his discovery “a stunning confirmation of what occurred at this level in the geologic record during the global Flood cataclysm”!
Through past decades, ReCreationists have been bold (2 Corinthians 11:19-20) to “double down” on anything. For me, with everything being created with “an apparent history” no more than 9,700 years ago, I’m OK with what’s at: earth impact database – going with the very low probability of a major impact in a given year. ReCreationism claims maybe one-a-day impacts while “Flood strata” were going down – a great crater under Chesapeake Bay being blasted out a few days following the Chicxulub Impact, with a few more days to hide it from sight before Day 150. Was Plate Tectonic Theory proved in the 1960s? Then the 1990s saw the advent of ReCreationism’s CPT theory (Catastrophic Plate Tectonics) shoving Earth’s continents about at speed.
Does current research report whole environments of plants and animals buried together in the fossil record? ReCreationism handles that today with the claim that, even months into a chaotic Flood, the water picked up, hauled away, and deposited major ecological sets of plants and animals. Since 2019 we can admire what’s reported from just “the first one million years” after Chicxulub at: corral bluffs colorado springs. Would God plan so long ago to fool everybody living today by having chaotic Flood waters save back so many different kinds of little mammals – and plant species to feed them – until all dinosaur and pterosaur species were in place (Days 100-140, or so) – and then give the OK for the Corral Bluffs fossils to go down here?
Did extinct “kinds” of creatures from the fossil record outnumber “kinds” of land creatures with us today, crowding into more than half of Noah’s Ark? No problem! Many thousands of bird and animal species (known today, and from the top 5,000,000 years of the fossil record) suddenly “diversified” from far fewer “kinds” on the Ark! So maybe just one generic fossil “cat kind” (Proailurus lemanensis) morphed into scores of cats of all shapes and sizes, including Smilodon (soon again extinct at the end of a very quick post-Flood Ice Age). That’s Re-Creationism for you! When Luther wrote “samt allen Kreaturen,” artists then and later loaded the Ark with what they saw. No dinosaurs. No pterosaurs, big or small, flying for months before Mesozoic burial.
Please find excellent reading at: arthur eggert wels. Just Do It! Near the bottom of the first Internet page is NPH (Northwestern) giving you the contents and the long Introduction of a 2019 book by Dr. Eggert & Rev. Kieta: Clearing a Path for the Gospel — A Lutheran Approach to Apologetics. This shapes Lutheran ministry. For quotations from Chapter 5 on “Creation and Science,” please go to: lutheran science institute. Here you find the latest LSI Journal (winter 2020) with comment on the book. The LSI Constitution makes ReCreationist Delugism an unalterable part of its apologetic, so it is no surprise that the LSI review of the Eggert/Kieta book “pushes back” in favor of LSI business as usual. I appreciate LSI’s great computer work.
You find Dr. Arthur Eggert first at: wls essay file, telling a 2011 pastor/teacher conference in Michigan that “Many students have lost their faith in Christ because it was tied to the baggage of creation science” (p. 13). Baggage is the proper word. This statement should chill your soul. Now in 2019: “Geologists have gathered evidence from many thousands of sites and have been able to create a model of how the world works which is consistent with the fossils being buried naturally over the course of almost a billion years. Obviously, God did not use this process, so he must have used a supernatural process or changed the rules of nature” (Clearing a Path…, p. 121). This lays it on the line: ReCreationism was never a valid way to go!
In the above, “used a supernatural process” covers my view: Earth’s geology with all its fossils from Creation time. And “changed the rules of nature” covers what this book rejects: the ReCreationist story of fossils from Flood time. “To the Christian, the source of these fossils is also clear; namely, the God of the Bible put them where we are finding them. …What we can be sure of is that it did not happen primarily by the natural processes of which we are now aware” (pp. 120, 121). “Natural processes” is what we mean by God’s created “Laws of Nature.” The 1961 The Genesis Flood said that lots of water on its own could have “deposited” everything. But Henry Morris, in his last piece for the CRS Quarterly, allowed for some divine intervention.
“A weak argument is usually worse than no argument at all” (p. 228, quoted in LSI Journal, winter 2020). “Even weak arguments can convince many” (LSI Journal, p. 17). I’d be happy not to find LSI rejecting the legitimate argument of fossils from Creation time with: “My personal view is that the created fossil apologetic is the least likely explanation for fossils. Nevertheless, if someone finds that believing in created fossils blunts the temptation of evolution for them, then let them believe in created fossils. They should though, become acquainted with the many theological problems posed by created fossils” (p. 32). My answer: I don’t “believe in” created fossils. Thinking does it. Nor am I “tempted” by evolution theory. But it overwhelms others.
The really big, original problem is Deep Time. As Clearing a Path… says, evidence for life (and death) on Earth points us back “almost a billion years.” There’s a ton of evidence at: letters to creationists tanis site. Pictures – the whole ball of wax! That accounts for my frustration, trying to communicate with Lutheran ReCreationists (ELS, WELS, LCMS) from here in the Midwest to Texas. Anything can be ignored when it slams the door on wrong-headed apologetic – while Lutheran membership dwindles year by year. So keep track of LSI for me in A.D. 2020. Will LSI say anything about Tanis, or Corral Bluffs? What if our all-knowing God of love created these top-drawer sites for right now, to help ELS & WELS & LCMS ReCreationists get real?
This is going to print out on more than two pages, so I may as well keep going. To see how ReCreationism stops at nothing, see if ashfall site nebraska works for you as a post-Flood work of God (the species here having “diversified” from “kinds” leaving Noah’s Ark in Bible History time). This site in NE Nebraska came close to being wiped out by their post-Flood ice age. But wait! The volcanic ash here came from 1,000 miles west, when a “Hot Spot” exploded under SW Idaho. North America still had to move west for years after God’s Flood miracle, for this Hot Spot to CREATE all of Yellowstone with several more mega-explosions. Why? Because the Pacific Plate was sliding west, for the CREATION of what’s at: instant paradise snelling.
How much more of this can you take? Is ReCreationism still working for you, to “blunt the temptation of evolution”? Then go to: snelling ark ararat (close to where three tectonic plates meet). All of Mt. Ararat is post-Flood? Not likely. Go to: snelling israel geology – comprehensive reports on real rock from 2010. But if maybe 50 feet of all kinds of sediments were “washed in” every day, then HOW, and from how FAR away? And, to top it off: jerusalem dinosaur tracks? How about: carmel caves neanderthal – or all of Earth’s greatest caves – or thousands of Ozark caves – all suddenly post-Flood? Or how were raw limestone ridges of the “Driftless Area” of the Upper Mississippi quickly covered with good dirt in ReCreationist Bible History?
“He who holds the firewood for the masses is the one who freezes to death in wind and snow.” That’s the honorific epigram posted in China today (02-06-20) following a report of the death of Wuhan eye-doctor Li Wenliang. On 12-30-19 he told classmates about a new virus. (This was reported on 12-31-19 to WHO China.) On 01-01-20 he was arrested for “rumor-mongering,” but released on 01-03-20 after signing a confession of his wrong-doing. On 01-10-20, he started coughing. His family may be infected. For every day of his illness, I’ve spent a year pointing good Lutherans at a contagion of errant apologetic: ReCreationism. Like a cancer, it survives only by virtue of infiltration of Christian concern that Creation is God’s Truth.
“Christians should always adhere to a higher standard of truth, being careful in the information they present to others.” That’s from CMI (a ReCreationist group, 12-03-19), in an article reprinted (p. 13) in the 12-09-19 Christian News. I see no flight feathers among the ten pictured, from an early Cretaceous lake bed in SE Australia. Phil Robinson of CMI properly points out that no dinosaur bones have been found in any association with the feathers in question. That just leaves Australia’s “South Pole” location to discuss. Go to: tim clarey pangaea (for ReCreationism’s pre-Flood world), and: pangaea wiki (where Australia sits with Antarctica closest to the pole). On CN’s p. 13, CMI argues for “successive burial of pre-Flood ecosystems.” Like I said.
Q: “Can’t Lutheran pastors just teach the Bible, and ignore your polemic?” A: Don’t the Lutheran Confessions follow “what we believe” with “what we reject”? Q: “What about Genesis 2:5-6, no rain in God’s perfect Creation?” A: Job 28:25-28, a created hydrology – so that “mission prospects” need not imagine a pre-Flood Neverland. Q: “Did you really spend 1993-2013 writing a 99-scene Noah story, Faith’s Daughters, at 6000 B.C., with speaking parts for 45 characters, with any of whom readers might identify?” A: Yes, and how did you first find out that, as Abraham waited 25 years for the birth of Isaac, so also Noah had to wait 20 years for the birth of his first son, Japheth? Q: “When did Noah’s sons marry?” A: Within ten years of the Flood.
Q: “Why do you make the geography of modern Turkey the stage for your pre-Flood scenes?” A: It all works, with a tin mine, for instance, at: kestel tin mine – west of where Noah grew up, two days NNE of: gozlukule hoyuk, Neolithic Tarsus. Q: “So who married the sons of Noah?” A: Amber, from: near doggerland, long after: storegga slide, stopping at: lepenski vir, arriving with her parents at the Ark site several days ENE of the Marmara Sea. Dawn, Asian, to marry Shem, traveling from the Indus River west through: mehrgarh. Sheba, from a coastal green sahara, by way of: haua fteah cave libya, with her father, a sailor. In secular science, etna atlit yam happened before my Noah story, but if you distrust C-14, who knows?
Nothing in the paragraph above existed as such pre-Flood, if ReCreationism is your way to go. Isn’t that just 100% crazy!? 1 Corinthians 14:23. Where the Bible is silent, how does suspicion of “rationalism” in apologetic excuse irrational opinion allowing nothing to provide “a safe place” where someone might want to look into Bible History? Don’t tell people to park their brains at your church basement door! Since 2013, no new discovery has mandated even the slightest revision in my Faith’s Daughters. If, today, some people aren’t quite so sure about: african mtDNA eve, nothing changes the fact that Ham’s wife was the mother of only 4 of Noah’s 16 grandsons. Odds are, then, that she was the mother of the most granddaughters.
Here, again, I’m telling you that 2 Peter 3:5-7 is not a great proof passage for ReCreationism. If Evolution Theory claims an appearance of Change Through Time, that’s just fine. Remind yourself that only God is unchanging and eternal. So “change” of every kind (future, present or past) has to “mark” every aspect of what God has made. So when Robert DePalma was looking for the “last day” of the dinosaurs, he went right to where that “change” might be found. It was the same for people wanting to document Cenozoic “changes” of plants and animals just east of Colorado Springs. Every new discovery is a spike into today’s zombie ReCreationism, driving more and more people to “worship” in Cathedrals of Deep Time, our natural history museums.
As a kid, I didn’t know that two of my Wisconsin uncles, Lutheran dairy farmers, sang barbershop for fun. Another uncle (WELS) lost some of his hearing while shooting big guns in the South Pacific. He came home to marry and build his own house, and many more. You can “tour” Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter on YouTube. All three of my uncles would have told you what I know for a fact, that this “Ark” is totally flawed, a death trap. For my Noah story, I designed a perfectly OK 450-foot Ark, all questions answered – and some that you don’t know to ask. My four college summers with the USFS (west and north and then south of Missoula MT) gave me hands-on experience in dealing with tall cedars and pine – as in Turkey east of the Marmara.
Christian News 