Inge Thinks...

Hi there! So here I am, still in residing in the terrible heat of Dallas, to bring you the second part of my incredible journey so far over the oceans. The last thing I talked about in the first part was the beginning of the conference, so, that is where I will start this second part.

First, we had to go to registration where we got cool name tags. Apparently I’m Inge van Eck and my hometown in Dallas, Texas. (Yes, I had to explain to quite a lot of people that I was actually from the Netherlands and not really from Texas, to the disappointment of many.) After all the fuss was done we went to the main hall and found some seats near the front. The first speaker of that night was Ken Ham, the CEO of Answers in Genesis and the owner of an incredibly awesome Australian accent. His talk was mainly about what he called ‘The Genesis 3 Attack’.

In Genesis 3, satan, in the form of a snake, tries to make Eve question what God really said. ‘Did God really say that you couldn’t eat from that tree, Eve?’ And that was the beginning of all the trouble. According to Ken Ham, that’s basically what the devil has been doing ever since. The Genesis 3 Attack, the ‘Did God really say that..’, has always been around and every century has had its own version of this. Today’s Genesis 3 Attack is, according to Ken Ham, the age of the earth. Because, the Bible states clearly that the earth and all living things upon it were created in six days and then, if you add up all the ‘this son of that dude bore this dude who lived for 300 years and then bore this dude’-you know, you will get about 4000 years to Jesus. Add 2000 until now and tada, the earth should be about 6000 years old. Yet, all the secular scientists say that the earth is way older than that, it is supposed to be billions and billions of years old. And this is where the Genesis 3 Attack comes in. Because God says that the earth is young, and the secular scientists say the opposite. And then the devil whispers in our ears, ‘Hey, you young student. Are you sure that God said that the earth is 6000 years old? Because all these scientists say otherwise.. I think that maybe you should read the Bible differently..’ And in come all these theories about how the days of creation were actually all a 1000 years or how there was a world before creation and blabla. Doubting the word of God. And once we start doubting the word of God, there’s no holding it. Because if we don’t believe that Genesis is really true, why should we believe that Jesus actually died for us? And gone is our entire faith.
So that’s mainly what his talk was about, accompanied by funny pictures and slides. He had some funny things to make his point about the six days of creation being really days. Everywhere in the Bible where it says ‘yom’, the Hebrew word for day, we automatically assume it’s a day. No-one questions that. But when it comes to Genesis, a day all of a sudden is a thousand years? But why should it only be a thousand years in Genesis? I mean, if a day = thousand years, then Jonah should have been in the whale for 3000 years (funny picture of really old whale and Jonah) and Joshua should have been walking around Jericho for 7000 years (funnier picture of Jonah and all of the Israelites with incredibly long beards) but everybody thinks that’s weird, right?

The second session of that night was by Dr. Andrew Snelling, and while Ken Ham mainly told us that the Bible declared a young earth, he showed us that science declares a young earth. He had some really cool evidence, I will try to show a few of these to you, but I do not guarantee understanding.
- So, we all know galaxies – right? We know that these things have these cool spirally arms that wind up around them. The thing is that the outer part of the galaxy turns faster than the inner part, so the spirally arms wrap themselves up, to put it bluntly. Assuming that these arms have always been winding up at the same speed, the earth never could have been billions and billions of years old, because all the galaxies were supposed to be ‘wound up’ by now!
- Another one. We know that the earth has a magnetic field, and assuming that the rate of it losing its energy has always been the same (which is losing half of its energy every 1400 years), the earth could never be older (and this is a maximum) than 20.000 years, because all of its energy would have been gone by now!
- This one is easy. We know that there is salt in the sea, and that there is salt added everyday. If the earth is to be billions and billions of years old, the sea should have been a lot more salty by now.
- DNA material decays real fast. We know that blood and cells do not survive long, even in really good conditions. Yet, there are scientists who claim that they have found blood of bacteria who lived billions and billions of years ago. Yeah, right.
And these are just a few of the ton of arguments Dr. Snelling told us about. So interesting!
You may have noticed that there is quite a lot of assumption in there. And that is true. In science there are always assumptions to be made. A very common assumption is the fact that a process right now happens at the same rate as it used to do thousands of years ago. So, say if I eat a sandwich in half an hour now, humans who lived 2000 years ago ate that sandwich in half an hour as well. This is one of many assumptions that can not be proved, because no-one was there to check it out, right?
So therefore whenever scientist, secular or christians, ‘prove’ something, be careful. Because nothing can really be ‘proven’, since there are always assumptions involved. That’s why this scientific evidence can be used to help people believe, but it should not be put above the Bible’s authority. Faith comes in at first place, an whatever science discovers should always ‘match’ the Bible. If it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that the Bible is wrong, but that means that our science is wrong.
Thus, do not rely on evidence but rely on your faith. If evidence seems to match that, wonderful, if not – faith!

Well, you might understand that after all of this I felt pretty tired. So when we got back to the hotel I was happy to find my four pillows still there and I immediately fell asleep. The next morning I first when to a session which was especially for women, but I didn’t really like that. The session after that was by Dr. Jason Lisle, and he was SO amazing. My goodness, I loved that guy. He’s like a supernerd (graduated summa cum laude) yet he is able to put even the most difficult concepts about stars and galaxies and whatever into simple and plain language so that even I, anti-science-Inge, could understand it! He was being real cool and starting from Galileo’s book on the discovery of some planets and stars, The Starry Messenger, he showed us how the universe declares God’s glory. I was overwhelmed – I never knew the universe was that big. You know, we are a tiny spot on the earth and the earth is a tiny planet in our solar system, and there are a whole bunch of these solar systems in our galaxy and then, this is what amazed me most, there are a whole bunch (like trillions billions gazillions) of galaxies that form our universe!
So seriously, go take an hour or something, grab your laptop and sit on the couch for a bit. Go google things like universe, nebula, galaxy or star and just look at God’s amazing creation. Wow. I just fall into silence. God is so great! It’s like Psalm 19:1 tells us so beautifully: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the works of His hands.’ Wow.

And I think I’ll just stop here now. Because I want you to think about the glory of God and the amazing work of His hands. Be amazed. Glorify God.

I can feel it. It’s in the air, it’s everywhere. When I wake up in the morning the sun is already up high in the sky (and that’s not because I wake up late!) and I hear birds everywhere. When I go outside I’m greeted by a flow of warm air that swirls around me, wraps me up in sweet scents and leaves me speechless. Summer is really here. The ice creams (yay!), long afternoons at the park with my boyfriend, the tanning in the backyard, the big glasses of icy cold water and the smell of sunscreen, hmm.

But I knew for sure that summer was here when I grabbed my camera, an hour or two ago, jumped on my bike and cycled for five minutes, arriving at the small forest just outside my hometown. The sun trickled through the fresh green leaves of the trees and the ground was covered with amazing amounts of tiny little flowers, plants and weeds. I sank to my knees in amazement and an hour later I found myself lying on the ground, covered in insect bites and scratches, with over 400 photos on my camera.

When I biked home I felt so full of God’s amazing creation and His glorious works that I couldn’t help but singing, with strange looks of a few people as a result. That feeling, that feeling of joy, of happiness and of wonder, that is summer. I’m in awe of God’s amazing skills and creativity, how He manages to let the sun fall on leaves and so many different weeds and flowers and make everything look so gorgeous. I’m absolutely in wonder of God’s fabulous creation, of His shining, divine, gorgeous, ravishing and glorious summer. I am in awe. It is summer.

Grace be with you all
and may great sheperd of the sheep
equip you with good things
for doing His will
and grace be with you all.

Beautiful, beautiful song. Have a blessed sunday!

Yesterday, I was at my amazing boyfriend’s church. It was a beautiful sermon and the songs were really amazing. But one of the things that struck me most that service was a song that was played during the Lord’s Supper. The song is called Broken and Beautiful, written by Brian Doerksen. You can listen to it here. (music fans: official chords here!) I love this song because it really gave me a different and fresh view on the Lord’s Supper. It’s different, but yet exactly what I feel.

As we break this bread, as we drink this cup – Lord we remember
how you gave your life, on a brutal cross – Lord we remember.
This is the way you’ve chosen to save, this is the way you make all things new.

Broken and beautiful – extravagant love, prodigal grace.
Broken and beautiful – God’s perfect justice, mercy’s embrace.

Next to it’s poetic beauty this is also a song that makes you look at God’s grace in a different way. At least, that’s what it did to me. The one thing that just jumped out was the part where he sings ‘This is the way, You’ve chosen to save. This is the way, You make all things new.’ Did you ever think about the way that God chose to save our lives? I mean, He could have easily started a war against the devil and He would have won. He could have easily let us take the blame ourselves. God could have done so many things, but he chose this way.

He chose the way where somebody else took the blame for us. But who would, willingly, take that blame? Who would give up his life for the lives of other people? People that keep on making the same mistakes over and over again? Exactly. No-one would. The only one that would willingly choose that way was God Himself – Jesus.

And yet Jesus didn’t choose a way of war, or fear. Jesus didn’t choose a way of laws or commandments, no, Jesus chose the way of love. The way to make everything new was through His never failing, unconditional and divine love. He chose a way of love, a beautiful love. Yet this love had to be broken to be beautiful. Jesus broke on a cross one day, so that you would never have to break. Undescribable extravagant love – that’s the way He chose.

This song changed my way of thinking – I know now what to remember. I will remember the way that God chose to save, the way He chose to make me new. God’s perfect justice, mercy’s embrace – broken and beautiful.