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® MAY–JUNE 2018 | VOLUME 30 ISSUE 3 “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet.” Isaiah 58:1 ® PAGE 3 PAGE 12 PAGE 5 Confessions of an Atheist Evoluon: Science or Philosophy? Why Does God Allow Suffering?

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MAY–JUNE 2018 | VOLUME 30 ISSUE 3 “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet.” Isaiah 58:1

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Confessionsof an Atheist

Evolution:Science or Philosophy?

Why Does GodAllow Suffering?

EDITORIAL

INDEXWhy Does God Allow Suffering? 3

Evolution: Science or Philosophy? 5

But Wasn’t the Bible Written by Man? 7

Earth–the God-Designed Home for Man 8

Confessions of an Atheist 12

Quotes from Scientists on Evolution 13

From Where Did Morality Come? 14

2 THE GOSPEL TRUMPET

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Evolutionists have it all wrong. This world did not begin with a big bang–it is going to end with one! “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” 2 Peter 3:10. And let it be known to all–there is an end coming and all will then be face to face with the God in whom many did not want to believe.

Evolutionists are also wrong in imagining a beginning without God. “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” This declaration by the writer of Hebrews is foundational to true understand-ing and wisdom–and to true science. Those who depart from this foundation fall into a bottomless pit of darkness and error. Every man needs to stand on a foundation, and God is that foundation.

Our current culture is saturated with secular humanism with its evolutionary philosophy–a breeding ground for athe-ism, to be sure. It seems almost popular to declare, “I am an atheist.” Yet, I have very little faith in these claims, and when I have told this to several who have professed such, I have rather enjoyed the look of shock upon their faces. In speaking to some, I have found their “conviction” does not run very deeply. They may be disillusioned with mainstream Christian-ity–and rightly so, for false religion is the bane of the earth, a stumblingstone keeping multitudes from finding God and real Christianity. Yet, there are many others that simply do not want to retain God in their knowledge, so they can sin without condemnation, but in their heart of hearts, they know He ex-ists, for God “lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). I am also fully persuaded that everyone will be a believer in God after they die. Ancient Anaximander, Darwin, and recently, Stephen Hawking are now believers in the God of the Bible.

Faith in God is reasonable. Don’t be fooled by the mantra of proud evolutionists. Their science is not sound and their philosophy is a sure road to hell. Sis. Mutch

THE GOSPEL TRUMPET 3

Why Does God Allow

SUFFERING?

Sorrow. Pain. Suffering. All have experienced the meaning of these words. With much pain do we en-ter this world and with pain do we

get old and die. Everywhere around us, suffering is evident. We see it in the eyes of the children who call a sidewalk their home. We meet with it in the slums and the brothels. It is caused by the natural di-sasters around us. We experience it when death takes a loved one from us. We feel it in our society of broken homes. Suffering discriminates against no one. It affects the

young and the old. Riches cannot bribe it away. No culture, no nation has been able to eradicate it. The very creation of God groans under it.

Many there are who ask the ques-tion, “How is it possible for a good and loving God to exist, in the light of such suffering?” How can we reconcile a loving Father with the agonies of this world? If God is good, if He is love, how can He sit back and allow such pain?

To be able to answer, it is necessary to

understand the root of all suffering. God is not the creator of evil. After He finished His creation, everything was “very good.” This world knew no pain. No death had ever occurred. No sickness had caused pain. No tear of sorrow had ever been shed. Adam and Eve knew no evil. But Sa-tan found an avenue to introduce it to this world. He placed the idea in Eve’s mind that God was withholding a good thing from her. He beguiled her to believe that there was more to attain to than what God had given her; but the cost for attaining it

was to disregard God’s clear command-ment. To convince her to rebel, Satan de-nied that death would follow.

What a damnable lie! Just as good re-sults in life, peace, and joy, so evil results in death, pain, and suffering. It is evil to reb-el against our good Creator. Thus, when Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God’s way, they opened the door of this world to evil. All wickedness, injustice, death, pain, and sorrow entered through the act of re-jecting God and His way. Since that day,

sorrow has been propagated by sin. Every pain we suffer finds its root in the problem of sin, whether it be our own or someone else’s. All the pain surrounding us, every tear we have shed in our own personal sor-row, has been caused by some sin.

But, even though suffering is caused by evil, God has produced the ultimate good out of suffering. The most extreme suffering ever experienced on Earth, the dying of Jesus Christ on the cross, brought about the greatest victory of good–the bruising of Satan’s head! The Christian

experiences this also in his personal life: God uses those very things that cause him the most pain, to bring about good. The Christian is refined by suffering, drawn closer to the Comforter in sorrow, made more Christ-like through the taking up of His painful cross. This is evidence of God’s great goodness and power, that He is able to turn even the effects of evil for good to His children.

And yet, the question lingers in the minds of many: “How can a good God sit

Sis. Edel Neufeld

4 THE GOSPEL TRUMPET

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The Bible teaches:

back and allow such suffering?” The answer is that God has nev-er been passive about the sufferings of humanity. He has never been deaf to the groans of His creation.

Jesus Christ is God’s answer to this world’s pain. In Him we find the only answer possible. God looked upon His creation after the Fall and saw the pain evil had caused. He sees when a sparrow falls to the ground. He notices each tear, each heart-

break, every injustice and sorrow. And He knows the root of it all is sin. So He provided a way to remove the very root of the problem. It cost Him everything, but He provided it nonetheless.

Jesus Christ denied Himself the glories of heaven and en-tered into our world of pain. He became acquainted with all our grief. He didn’t enter this world in a kingly palace, but was found in a lowly stable. He had no place to rest His head. He surround-ed Himself with the heartbroken, the suffering, the poor, and the rejected of this world. He brought healing, forgiveness, and hope wherever He went. But He was rejected by His creation. They spat on Him and mocked Him to His face. After enduring much agony and pain, He was nailed to a mean cross. But His suffering went even beyond the tortures of His body.

On that cross, Jesus Christ bore all the sin and suffering of this world. Surely, He has borne our griefs and carried our sor-rows. He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:4-5). To what purpose? That by His stripes we could be healed! Healing of every kind; healing for every malady. What He accomplished on the cross was the de-struction of the very source of humanity’s problem. Sin lost its gripping power. Death lost its sting. He opened the way for us to be freed from sin–completely set free from the cause of our suffering!

Shame on the prophets of Satan who propagate a sin-you-must doctrine; that tell the masses they cannot help but to sin. Jesus Christ came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and that is exactly what He accomplished. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body,” “for sin shall not have dominion over you” (Romans 6:12, 14)! To sin is to propagate the suffering of this world. Salvation, and the resulting deliverance from all sin, is the solution to humanity’s groanings. Every time a sinner repents and forsakes all sin, the momentum of wickedness and its result-ing pain and sorrow receives a tremendous blow.

It is unreasonable to blame God for the suffering of this world, as long as one rejects His provided cure for it. It was the choice to rebel against God and His way that brought every evil upon this earth, and by such choices are evil and its effects still propagated t o d a y . Sinners ask, “How is it possible for a good and loving God to exist, in light of such suffering?” And God replies with a question of His own: “How is it possible for you to choose to remain in your sins, in the light of such suffering?” &

To sin is to propagate the suffering of this world.

When Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God’s way, they opened the door of this world to evil.

THE GOSPEL TRUMPET 5

These quotes taken from Lee Stro-bel’s book, The Case for a Creator, illustrate a tiny sample of what one man found in his search for the possibility of a Creator for the universe. As a journalist with a love for investigation, Strobel personally interro-gated scientific authorities from numerous fields of study to find out what science’s most current findings had to say about the origin of the universe and of living things. He began his journey as a skeptic with a lot of difficult questions, but was quick-ly forced to change his position. What amazed him repeatedly was that science it-self points toward God! The experts were aware of it. Of course, there were many loyal atheists in the ranks of science, but they were having a hard time finding the-

Sis. Kara Braun

“Science, you might say, has discovered that our existence is infinitely improbable, and hence a miracle.”

John Horgan, science journalist

“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been sat-isfied to get it going.” Francis Crick, who helped discover the molecular struc-ture of DNA.

“Scientists who utterly reject evolution may be one of our fastest growing controversial minorities…Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive cre-dentials in science.” Larry Hatfield, writing in Science Digest

ories to explain away the weaknesses in Darwinian philosophy. Some were athe-ists because that was more “scientifically” acceptable–they feared to be censured by scientific colleagues or to voice objections that were not politically correct. Some doubtless refused to acknowledge God because of the inconvenience of being ac-countable to Him. But scientific evidence itself was farther away than ever from ex-plaining the existence of the universe apart from God. And the men who were most advanced in their fields were the ones most aware of this problem.

One scientist whom Strobel inter-viewed pointed out the hypocrisy in biol-ogy textbooks of the day. Common “icons of evolution”–images used widely in text-books to stamp evolutionary theory upon the minds of American students and cited by almost any scientist to describe the evi-dence for evolution–were all either false or misleading. These icons included Darwin’s tree of life, which depicted a branching tree as the pattern by which complex life forms developed and branched off gradu-ally through natural selection from a single common ancestor; Haeckel’s embryos, which showed the similarities of various creatures in their earliest stages; the archaeopteryx, which was supposed to be a missing link between rep-tiles and birds; and Miller’s experiment, which used electric sparks to produce amino acids from a supposed ear-ly-earth atmosphere.

Investigation overturned every one of the icons mentioned. Darwin’s tree of life was a theory contradicted by the fossil evidence. Rather than showing a gradual change in life forms from a few simple or-ganisms to gradually more complex forms

over a long range of time, the fossil record shows a remarkably fast appearance of ma-jor groups of animals all at the same time with characteristics widely differing from each other. Haeckel’s drawings of embryos had been accused of fraud over one hun-dred years ago. Besides picking out only examples that supported his theory and ignoring those that didn’t, Haeckel had ap-parently used the same woodcut for em-bryos of different classes and had falsely represented the drawings to be at different developmental stages than they really were. When recent biologists brought the fact to light, expert scientists showed no signs of surprise. They had known about the dis-crepancy for years, and yet it was still being published as fact in science textbooks!

Another evolutionary icon was the archaeopteryx, a beautiful creature but no more of a missing link than the duckbill platypus or any other unusual animal we see in existence today. It had the essential body structure of a bird and did not over-come the problem of how a transitional form with a body structure between that of a reptile’s and a bird’s could have sur-vived.

Finally there was the Miller experi-

ment. It began, scientists agreed, with the wrong atmosphere, and it produced only amino acids, something far short of life even in its simplest form. The scien-tist whom Strobel was interviewing used an example to describe the impossibility of creating even one living cell by mere electricity. If you put an existing cell into a test tube with a sterile salt solution and

Evolution: Science or Philosophy?

What amazed him repeatedly was that science itself pointed toward God!

Sis. Kara Braun

6 THE GOSPEL TRUMPET

poke a hole in it so that the contents leak out, you have all the components of life, which is already more than Miller’s experi-ment was able to do. Still, no scientist in his right mind would try to put them back together again in just the right way to pro-duce a new cell. The process is simply too complicated. In reply to Strobel’s question of why examples like these were still pub-lished in evolutionary textbooks, the scien-tist acknowledged: “It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that this is materialistic philoso-phy masquerading as empirical science. The attitude is that life had to have developed this way because there’s no other materialistic ex-planation. And if you try to invoke another explanation–for in-stance, intelligent design–then the evolu-tionists claim you’re not a scientist.”

Lee Strobel went on to interview learned men from the fields of cosmol-ogy, physics, astronomy, biochemistry, and more. Everywhere the evidence piled up in favor of God. Not only did science show that the universe had a beginning–which fact implies something greater than the universe to have given it a beginning–but science also showed that this first Cause was an intelligent cause. Strobel found that physical laws which govern the universe are fine-tuned with stunning precision to make life possible. If the force of gravity were set on a dial that spanned the entire width of the universe, and that dial were moved by just one inch in either direction, the universe could no longer support life; and gravity is merely one of more than thirty unrelated physical laws and parame-ters which require such infinitesimal preci-sion that a slight change in their numerical values would mean disaster for us.

Design is also evident in the extreme complexity of the information stored in the human DNA molecule. This infor-mation is spelled out in computer-like code using only four letters which have no chemical attraction to each other and therefore no inherent force ordering them into a certain sequence. Their arrangement

is ordered by something outside the sys-tem–leading Strobel to marvel “It’s almost as if the Creator autographed every cell.” There has obviously been a purposeful mind at work all over creation. If the uni-verse were put on trial for how it originated, Strobel says there would be more evidence for God being “guilty” of creating it than the DNA evidence that is used in modern courtrooms to convict a thief or murderer

of his crime.Walter Mar-

tin, in a lecture entitled “Com-mon Campus Curses,” sup-ports the argu-ment of design with the example of a beautiful new automobile rolling off the

end of an auto man-ufacturing assembly line. You look at the automobile and exclaim, “Wasn’t that an amazing as-sembly line to have produced such a remarkable automo-bile!” The people around you start wondering if you are crazy because they know that it takes an engineer to pro-duce an automobile; the assembly line can do no more than put it together. In the same manner, evolutionists try to ascribe the wonders of the universe to nature, but nature has no creative, designing power–it is only a mechanism used to put the de-sign together. We cannot say that chance brought the universe about with so much beauty and precision. Chance, if given enough time, can produce momentary order, but it does not have the power to sustain that order. You can throw down a box of alphabets and end up with “abc,” but the next throw will invariably scramble the letters again. In Martin’s words, “What chance creates, it almost instantaneously annihilates.”

Science has never proved that there

is no God. Science, by definition, cannot prove how the universe came into exis-tence. It cannot prove that God created it, nor can it prove that God did not create it. Why? Because science can only prove things that can be observed and repeated. No scientist was there when the universe began. Nobody observed and documented how it happened. Nobody can repeat the creation of the universe. Chance and natu-ral selection themselves are not repeating any creative process beyond slight, prede-termined variation within a species (de-termined, in other words, by information that was already there and not by added information). What has not been observed and cannot be repeated cannot be proved to have happened. People can propose theories, but they will remain theories. To conclusively affirm how the universe came about is outside the realm of science and, in that sense, a decision of faith (whether

faith in God or faith in nature). All we can do is look at the evidence that is there and judge which conclusion is the most reasonable. Where does the evi-dence point? Toward creation! God has left fingerprints all over Creation–on the stars, the rocks, and the oceans; on complex systems and individu-

al atoms; and most of all on living man with his will, his mind, and his personality. These fingerprints are difficult to ignore.

What if God does exist? The mere chance that God exists should inspire a person to seek for Him. The mere chance that we may have to give account to Him should make us find out what He requires of us. To ignore the possibility of His exis-tence and dare to meet Him unprepared is too risky when the evidence of His handi-work is undeniably strong. &

Information used in this article has been taken from the following sources:

“The Case for a Creator” by Lee Strobel; published by Zondervan, copyright 2004

“Common Campus Curses,” a lecture by Walter Martin (date and place unknown)

THE GOSPEL TRUMPET 7

Has God given man a revelation? Has He spoken? I say, unquestionably, yes. And this word to us is contained in the books of the Bible. This being the case, it is no surprise that Satan levels his attacks against its veracity.

Divine Inspiration“But,” says the skeptic, “the Bible was

written by men.” The Bible was penned by men, 40 of them, separated over a period of about 1,500 years. They tell of the be-ginning of the world and both the history and the future of man, and these witnesses all agree! And when Jesus lived upon this earth about 2,000 years ago, He referred to what some of those men said, declar-ing, “It is written.” He referred to their writings as being authoritative and called it scripture.

The books of the Bible are no ordi-nary writings of man, but were written with divine inspiration from God. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous-ness.” 2 Tim. 3:16.

“For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 2 Pet. 1:21.

Historical AccuracyThe Bible is historically reliable and

archaeology confirms it.At one time, outside of the Bible ac-

counts, nothing was known of the Hittites (who would have interacted with biblical figures as early as Abraham and as late as

Solomon). Therefore, critics were quick to discredit the Bible. But ample archaeologi-cal findings in the late 19th century hushed their unbelieving voices.

Several years back, a non-Christian ar-chaeologist in Jerusalem told some in our group that the most reliable sources for ar-chaeologists were the Bible and Josephus.

Noted archaeologist Nelson Glueck wrote, “As a matter of fact, however, it may be clearly stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever contro-verted a single biblical reference. Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.” (Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert, 136, 173)

William Ramsay, regarded as a great archaeologist, was initially skeptical about the accuracy of the Book of Acts, until his research revealed the meticulous accuracy of its historical details. He concluded that: “Luke is a historian of the first rank…this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians.” (More Than a Carpenter, p. 43-44)

Textual Attestation“There is no body of ancient literature

in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Tes-tament.” Professor F. Bruce. Numbers of ancient documents have copies of cop-ies, yet they have much less corroboration than has the Bible. There are more than 5,000 manuscripts of the Bible catalogued today. Next to the New Testament, Hom-er’s Iliad has the greatest amount of manu-

But Wasn't the Bible

Written by Man?

script testimony–fewer than 650 Greek manuscripts, and they are from the 2nd and 3rd century and later, though Homer composed it in 800 BC–a tremendous gap of time between the original and the cop-ies! Modern scholars are not reluctant to accept other ancient copies as authentic, yet the gap between them and the origi-nals are centuries, while with the Bible it is but generations. (Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, p. 59-62)

“In no other case is the interval of time between the composition of the book and the date of the earliest manuscripts so short as in that of the New Testament.” (Sir Frederic Kenyon, former director of the British Museum)

Prophecies FulfilledFulfilled prophecy testifies to the di-

vine inspiration of the Bible. Who but God can record history before it happens, and who but His prophets could write it? They uttered prophecies that were sometimes hundreds of years yet future, even the rise and fall of kingdoms. They all came to pass. It is estimated that in Daniel 11 alone, there are 135 prophecies detailing conflicts between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids and also of the rise of Antiochus Epiph-anes and his invasion of Israel. So precise are the political prophecies in this chapter that some skeptics insist they could not have been written in Daniel’s time.

And, of course, we have the many prophecies of Christ at His first coming, then later, Jesus’ own prediction of His death and resurrection and also the de-

Continued on Page 13

8 THE GOSPEL TRUMPET

EarthThe God-Designed Home

for Man

THE GOSPEL TRUMPET 9

Earth–unique, amazing…home! There is no planet like this jewel of the solar system. Earth is the only planet having oceans of liq-uid water, an atmosphere with free oxygen, and LIFE, for this is the planet God formed “to be inhabited.”

Yet some people hope to leave this home on Earth and travel to Mars, dreaming of a future colony there. Dream on, if you will, but red dust, extreme cold, and an unliveable atmosphere are no draw to the sensible. Man was not meant to live there. Some evolutionary scientists are eager to find life on another planet that they might pres-ent evidence that blind chance happened somewhere else besides our planet earth, with all of its wonders and order. Yet, to this date, life has been found on no other planet. The Bible declares that God has given the earth to the children of men (Psalm 115:16). Our planet, and our planet only, was uniquely designed of God to accommodate human life.

Evolutionists would have us believe that Earth and the entire universe, mankind included, all came about by an as-yet-unexplained “big bang.” Edward Tryon, an evolutionary scientist, even went so far as to say, “Our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time”! Okay, so all of the complexity and order in our cosmos just unexplainedly came out of nothing? Is not this a remark-able statement of “faith”–for it is surely not science! It is, in fact, pre-posterous and a statement of absolute folly; the lie some would rather adhere to than to acknowledge their Creator and God.

To look upon all the wonders of the earth alone, let alone the en-tire universe, is more than enough evidence for any reasonable mind to believe in an Almighty Creator. Modern scientists only display their folly by declaring that all these wonders happened by an amazing chance coalition of dancing atoms, which came from they-know-not-where. Evolutionary science has no foundation upon which to stand.

Honest contemplation will make one stand in awe and declare that it is “the wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge” (Job 37:16). Let us consider but a few points regarding how God has created the earth, as stated in Isaiah 45:18, as the planet designed for the habitation of man. Consider and believe.

“For thus saith the Lord that created the

heavens; God himself that formed the

earth and made it; he hath established

it, he created it not in vain, he formed

it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and

there is none else.” Isaiah 45:18

Ye are blessed of the Lordwhich made heaven and earth.

The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given

to the children of men.Psalm 115:15-16

Life: Earth abounds with life everywhere–from ocean depths, from pole to pole, and in the atmosphere. There is no evidence of life on any other planet.

“Scientists tell us that if the earth were just 10 percent bigger or 10 percent smaller, life as we know it could not survive.” Erwin Lutzer, Seven Reasons Why You Can Trust the Bible, p. 123

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

“The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.” Proverbs 3:19.

We have air to breathe. Our atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen. If much more, fires would erupt; if it were 15 percent, we would suffocate. Earth’s oxygen is in el-emental form, meeting our specific needs.

“There is only one planet where gaseous oxygen is found: Earth! And the only rea-son that Earth has oxygen is because Earth has plants that do photosynthesis. There is no other natural process that we know of that will put significant amounts of oxygen into a planet’s atmosphere.” www.curious.astro.cornell.edu

The Ozone Layer is one layer of the stratosphere. It is a mass of protective gases that cling to our planet, shielding it by absorbing almost all of the intense ra-diation from the sun. If our atmosphere were much thinner, life would be harmed by radiation. Also, many of the millions of meteors that now are burned up would then reach the surface of the earth, caus-ing destruction.

Air Currents: “The air close to the earth’s surface is heated by light energy from the sun, and after the air is warmed it becomes less dense and rises upward. The result is that the air near the earth’s surface main-tains a temperature in which life can exist. If air contracted when heated and became denser, the temperature…would become unbearable…The temperature a few hun-dred feet above the surface, on the other hand, would be extremely cold, and most life could also not exist. The rising warm surface air creates air currents of wind which carry away carbon dioxide from ar-

eas that have too much, such as cities, and move oxygen to areas in need of it.” www.icr.org

Bodies of Water: About 71 percent of the earth’s surface is water covered. God uses this to stabilize temperatures that ac-commodate life. Enormous amounts of heat are absorbed by these waters during the day, which helps keep the earth cool. Then at night, this heat is released, helping to keep much of the earth from freezing

Earth’s orbit around the sun is slightly elliptical, having an eccentricity of about 2 percent, which means it is nearly circular. If the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit were near one, our oceans would boil when we were nearest the sun, and freeze at our far-thest point.

Gravity: “Gravitation is responsible for keeping the earth and the other planets in their orbits around the sun and for keeping the moon in its orbit around the earth.

‘If the gravitational force were altered by 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent, our sun would not exist, and, therefore, neither would we.’” (Geisler and Nix, p. 102) www.ucg.org

“If the centrifugal force of planetary movement did not precisely balance the gravitational forces, nothing could be held in orbit around the sun.”

“If the thickness of the earth’s crust were greater, too much oxygen would be transferred to the crust to support life. If it were thinner, volcanic and tectonic activity would make life impossible.”

“If the rota-tion of the earth took longer than twenty-four hours, temperature dif-ferences would be too great between night and day. If the rotation period were shorter, atmo-spheric wind velocities would be too great.” I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Geisler and Turek, p. 105.

Earth’s spin on its axis: “The earth ro-tates at just the right speed, making a com-plete revolution every twenty-four hours in its trip around the sun. The result is, the earth’s crust is evenly heated like a chick-en on a turning spit.” Fred Meldau, Why We Believe in Creation, Not in Evolution, 1968.

None of the other planets in our solar system have the same speed of rotation.

God put Jupiter in its current orbit to act as a protector for the earth against space material. Its gravitational field attracts comets and asteroids that might otherwise strike the earth.

“The orbits of Jupiter and Saturn keep the earth’s orbit from becoming chaotic. With-out the orbital stability produced by Jupiter and Saturn, the earth’s orbit would make extreme changes causing instability in our climate and making earth uninhabitable.” www.icr.org

The Moon: The earth’s carefully cali-brated circular path, tilted at just the right

“The fool hath said…”

It started with a big bang–after myriads of years, the atoms and mol-ecules (from where they came, we know not), hit the right combination and voila! there was a universe with galaxies, planets, and then people!

“Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a spar-kling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate, sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth…home.”

“My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.” ― Edgar Mitchell

“To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible…It just strengthens my faith. I wish there were words to describe what it’s like.” ― John Glenn

“The Earth reminded us of a Christ-mas tree ornament hanging in the black-ness of space. As we got farther and far-ther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of

Astronauts Declare His Glory

“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained: What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” Psalm 8:3-4

angle on its axis, is also influenced by the moon. “The moon affects the earth through its gravitational attraction…the [earth’s] ocean tides pull on the moon…These tides also slow the earth’s rotation” Neil Comins, What If the Moon Didn’t Ex-ist? 1993, p. 4.

The moon’s gravity causes the tides to con-tinually circulate and freshen the oceans, without which life would not flourish as it does.

“Moonlight intensity and daylight/moon-light ratios, which vary with the season, regulate salmon migration, growth, and development. Even some plant chloro-phyll activity depends in part on moon-light.”

“The moon’s monthly cycle regulates

water in cultivated soil, triggering seed swelling, seed bursting, seed germination, leaf growth, root growth.” James Johnson, Acts&Facts, Sept. 2015.

This angle of spin is called obliquity. “The obliquity…of three of the four ‘terrestrial’ planets of our solar system–Mercury, Ve-nus, and Mars has varied chaotically. Earth is the exception, but only because it has a large moon…Earth’s climactic stability is dependent to a large extent on the exis-tence of the Moon” Ward and Brownlee, Rare Earth, p. 266.

“The relationship between the earth, sun, moon, and stars is so predictable that an eclipse can be pinpointed hundreds of years in advance.” Erwin Lutzer, Seven Rea-sons You Can Trust the Bible, p. 125.

We live on a very special planet, de-signed for us by a supremely powerful and all-wise God. And this same God is He who is “upholding all things by the word of his power.” Heb. 1:3.

It is said by scientists that the universe would collapse into a small ball of matter were it not for the continual electrostatic forces of gravity that keep electrons sepa-rated. Truly, the entire universe is sustained by His great mercy.

Albert Einstein, a scientist, confessed: “The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation…His religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic think-ing and acting of human beings is an utter-ly insignificant reflection.” & S. Mutch

God and the love of God.” “I felt the power of God as I’d never

felt it before.” ― James Irwin

“And in that moment, I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every liv-ing thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space.” ― Ron Garan

Frank Borman was commander of the first space crew to travel beyond the Earth’s orbit. Looking down on the earth from 250,000 miles away, Borman radioed back a message, quoting Genesis One: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As he later explained, “I had an enor-mous feeling that there had to be a power greater than any of us–that there was a God, that there was indeed a beginning.”

― Frank Borman

“We haven’t been any-where yet. The size of the universe is the closest thing to infinity that I can imag-

ine. It helps me to understand just a little bit of the infinite wisdom and power of the Creator-God who I’m convinced made this vast universe…

“After being in space, I certainly have a much greater appreciation for the world God has made, the universe He’s created. It’s very clear in my mind that this universe couldn’t have happened by chance…

“The cosmos is far more complex than any space vehicle. If I can’t believe that the spacecraft I fly assembled itself, how can I possibly believe that the uni-verse assembled itself. I’m convinced only an intelligent God could have built a uni-verse like this.” ― Jack Lousma

12 THE GOSPEL TRUMPET

I used to be an atheist. No, not the kind of “atheist” that exhausts him-self trying to disprove God. You know that kind. The ones that leave

Santa alone because they know he doesn’t exist, but spend their lives debating about God who they think doesn’t exist. That wasn’t me. I didn’t see a point debating about a God that, to me, wasn’t real. I really believed there was no God. I spent years in that condition. But now that my ignorance is gone and I’ve experienced the tangible and thrilling work of salvation, I better understand my past errors. These are the confessions of an atheist:

Confessions of an

ATHEIST

I turned my face to the sky, cussed God with all the foulest curse words I knew and told Him to leave me alone. He did–for years. Those were the darkest years of my life. I turned from what I knew and be-came a skeptic. I get it; many atheists never cursed God to His face. But whether they acknowledge it or not, they turned from Him, too.

2) My atheistic beliefs did not satisfy me. Atheists act like they have it figured out. They say there isn’t enough evidence to prove God’s existence, so they believe He doesn’t, but they can’t prove that either, and they know it. Darwin satisfied neither my soul nor my intellect. I spent a lot of time looking into the night sky, wondering what was out there, and why I was here. Creation itself demanded an explanation and as an atheist, I knew I didn’t have the answer.

3) I would have never admitted it, but I paid attention to people who called themselves Christians. I acted like I wasn’t interested, but, deep down, I wanted to see if they had something real. I was turned off by professed Christianity. But there was always something in me that hoped someone could demonstrate God. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I tested peo-ple to see what they were made of. Maybe someone had something better than I had. That wouldn’t have taken much to accom-plish.

4) The best way to convince an athe-ist is to live like Jesus. Some can be per-suaded by debate, but most won’t allow themselves to be. They love to argue about God, and often they are trying harder to convince themselves than others. They choose not to believe, because they feel there isn’t a reason to. Most of the time they won’t hear reason because their whole foundation is baseless. Jesus told His dis-ciples to love one another that the world may believe. A godly soul that lives in the spirit of devotion to his Master, which causes his heart to flow in goodwill to all men, despite their myriad contradictions, is he who can win an atheist. A holy life is the

1) No one enters the atheist world-view without having, at some point, turned away from the living God. “I have never believed in God,” they say. This may mean that they don’t remember, but they are mistaken. God has revealed Himself to everyone. Jesus is the Light that light-eth EVERY MAN that cometh into the world. They may argue, “I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. Your parents taught you about God.”

Sorry, not mine. I was raised in as godless a home as one can have. My father didn’t teach me how to pray. My mother didn’t take me to church meetings. But

somehow, against those odds, God showed Himself to me. I knew He was real when I was little. He spoke to me, and I to Him. It wasn’t until I was a youth, enriched by the ever “progressive” philosophies of public schools, that I learned my great-grandfa-ther was a chimpanzee, and his father was a slug. I suppose that’s why my brain be-came mushy.

Somewhere in my preteen years, I began to think myself too “educated” and “intelligent” to believe in creation. I thought the slug hypothesis to be much more likely. I knew better than to believe

in a book like the Bible, which man wrote. Besides, I had my science text-books to believe in. Science was the answer. With my extensive science background and ana-lytical skills, I was able to judge that Bill Nye the Science-Guy had all the answers. And I could watch him on TV, and that way was more provable than an old book. Also, Bill didn’t make me feel bad about my sins, and that was a big plus.

Thus, I chose to become an atheist. I said chose. I wasn’t born that way. I wasn’t deprived of the ability to believe in God. The grace of God appears to all men, and it appeared to me. As a young teenager

Bro. Addison Everett

THE GOSPEL TRUMPET 13

struction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70.

Paul spoke of the great falling away that would follow his time, and John re-lated the entire history of the Gospel Day with the false and deceptive systems of religion that would arise and fight the true church. His end time prophecies are currently being fulfilled, bringing us ever nearer to the prophesied second coming of Jesus Christ to call this world into Final Judgment. This will come to pass!

Words of LifeThe Bible is a divine revelation to

man, proclaiming how sin and suffering came into the world and how the God of heaven, out of love for fallen man, came down to give Himself as a sacrifice to de-liver him from his sinful condition.

It is a message of love and hope, and it reveals that man is God’s special cre-ation–not the result of a chance coalition

of atoms!It is the world’s best-selling and most

widely distributed book, and is read, stud-ied and quoted by more people than any other book. It has impacted the world and dramatically changed and empowered lives.

Many are quick to blindly denounce the Bible, but as another writer expressed, history, prophecy, science, and Christ Himself all stand as witnesses to its ver-ity. Honest scholars will agree, while those willingly ignorant refuse to.

Time magazine was right when it said, “Atheists can’t wait to prove the whole thing is a fairy tale.” Their waiting will be futile. Try as they might, the Bible with-stands all the vilification of its enemies.

Erwin Lutzer rightly declared, “Per-haps the reason for the Bible’s longevity can be found not in the men who wrote it, but in the God who inspired it.” & —Sis. Susan Mutch

Continued from Page 7But Wasn't the Bible Written by Man?

This refutes (1) atheism because the universe was created by God. It refutes (2) pantheism, for God is transcendent to that which He created. It refutes (3) polytheism, for one God created all things. It refutes (4) materialism, for matter had a beginning. It refutes (5) dualism, for God was alone when He created. It refutes (6) humanism, for God, not man, is the ultimate reality. It refutes (7) evolution because God created all things.

—The Genesis Record, Henry M. Morris

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

greatest evidence an atheist will ever see. The demonstrations of power and glory which emanate from a life fully surren-dered to the will of God are undebatable. The reality of salvation is proof of the re-ality of God. Let an atheist get to know a real saint. Let him watch those saintly lives and their families, with their joy abound-ing. Let their selfless charity be known, and he will find the proof he has been search-ing for.

These are the confessions of an athe-ist. Not all atheists are pretending. But any who read this ought to acknowledge that I have herein confessed what you have not been willing to admit. &

“We have had enough of the Darwin-ian fallacy. It is time that we cry: ‘The em-peror has no clothes.’” (K. Hsu, geologist at the Geological Institute at Zurich; Dar-win’s Three Mistakes, vol. 14, 1986, p. 534)

“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolu-tion we do not have one iota of fact.” (Dr. T. N. Tahmisian, a former U.S. Atomic En-ergy Commission physiologist)

“One of the reasons I started tak-ing this anti-evolutionary view, was…it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long…so for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of

Quotes from Scientistson Evolution

Continued on Page 15

In all ages and around the globe, man has had some concept of God. However twisted that concept may have been in all its forms, men have

had an inward sense of knowing that they are accountable to someone. Someone is more powerful than they are; someone controls the forces of nature; someone determines standards of right and wrong; and that Someone (often viewed as a plu-rality of deities) requires their worship.

Modern skeptics, using such philoso-phies as naturalism and Darwinian evo-lution, have felt that they could get away from God by defining Him out of exis-tence and making nature appear respon-sible for itself. Yet their philosophies fall short of answering the deeper questions that arise from time to time in the heart of an honest individual. Is there not more to man than his physical, material substance? Is there not a higher power than men who is pleased or displeased with the actions of humanity? Is there not some future state of existence, some kind of retribution coming, and someone to whom the soul will have to answer when he has departed this life?

The concept of morality itself is strong evidence for God. Why do human beings everywhere acknowledge such a thing as right and wrong? We teach our children that there are things they may do and things they ought not to do. We expect others to treat us a certain way, and we feel

that we are being wronged if they hurt us. The justice system of our country forbids certain behaviors and recognizes the need of discipline when rules are not obeyed. People are locked up for a reason–because somebody feels that someone else has done wrong and cannot be allowed to get by. From where does this sense of right and wrong come?

Relativism has described morals as values or expectations determined by a culture. According to this thought, there are no absolutes of right and wrong, but people and cultures decide what is right and wrong for themselves. What is true for me may not be true for you. What is true for my culture may not be true for the people in Africa or Australia or India, and so forth. According to relativism, a Chris-tian society may not impose its beliefs on another society because that would be in-terfering with their culture.

However reasonable this theory sounds, it breaks down on the level of real life, and it is responsible for untold dam-age to society. Scholar and preacher Wal-ter Martin used the example of a Jewish philosopher teaching in Nazi Germany in 1938. The Jew is called into the office of the head of the Gestapo to be informed that as a threat to the reich, he will be taken to Dachau to die. He wants to plead for his life, but he has no relativistic basis upon which to do so. He is in the Nazis’ ballpark, at the mercy of their cultural im-

From Where Did Morality

Come?

Sis. Kara Braun

14 THE GOSPEL TRUMPET

peratives. The Nazis consider him a sub-culture and feel that it is right to kill him. No one can tell them killing is wrong be-cause for them, in this situation, killing is right. No one can interfere unless there is some higher authority than their culture. While the example given is fictional, over six million people faced it in reality. It was philosophers like Nietche and Marx who made possible the murder of some fifty-seven million people within forty years.

We shrink from the implications of this example because we know that the ruthless, barbaric treatment of so many in-nocent people cannot be right in any con-text. No matter how right they felt about what they were doing, those murderers deserve justice for their crimes. But from where does the imperative “Thou shalt not kill” come? It does not originate with humanity, for humanity lives in a context of kill or be killed. It comes from a God who overrules humanity and decides what is right and wrong. It comes from a God who cares about how human beings treat each other and how they approach Him.

You as an individual may choose to live life without God. You may find His moral system restrictive and ignore His dictates of right and wrong. You may enjoy freedom from a condemning conscience as you run from the responsibility of your actions. But what will happen when you are the one being wronged instead of the one wronging others? What will happen when you need protection from a merci-less person or group of people who feels

it is their rightful prerogative to crush you? When it is you that becomes the victim, will you not want to acknowledge some degree of morality and to take refuge in a higher authority to defend your cause? Will the authority of your culture be enough?

The world as we know it is rapidly becoming more wicked and cruel, and will continue to worsen with the passing of time. It is only when men acknowledge God in their thinking and submit to His law in their life, that they will find the solu-tion to the problems of the human race, both individually and collectively. &

Is there not more to man than hisphysical, material substance?

THE GOSPEL TRUMPET 15

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Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing–it ought not to be taught in high school.’” Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist; British Museum of Natural History, Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 1981.

“The theory of evolution…will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future. Posterity will marvel that so flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity it has.” (Malcolm Muggeridge, well-known philosopher)

“It is a confrontation between scientific objectivity and ingrained prejudice–between logic and emotion–between fact and fiction…In the final analysis, objective scientific logic has to prevail…no matter how many time-honoured idols have to be discarded in the process…After all, it is not the duty of sci-ence to defend the theory of evolution and stick by it to the bitter end–no matter what illogical and unsupported conclu-sions it offers…If in the process of impartial scientific logic, they find that creation by outside intelligence is the solution to our quandary, then let’s cut the umbilical cord that tied us down to Darwin for such a long time. It is choking us and holding us back…Every single concept advanced by the theory of evolu-tion (and amended thereafter) is imaginary as it is not supported by the scientifically established probability concepts. Darwin was wrong…The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake made in science.” (I. L. Cohen–member of the New York Acad-emy of Sciences and Officer of the Archaeological Institute of America–Darwin Was Wrong–A Study in Probabilities, p. 6-8, 209-210, 214-215)

“Darwinian theory is the creation myth of our culture. It’s the officially sponsored, government financed creation myth that the public is supposed to believe in, and that cre-ates the evolutionary scientists as the priesthood…So we have the priesthood of naturalism, which has great cultural author-ity, and, of course, has to protect its mystery that gives it that authority–that’s why they’re so vicious towards critics.” (Phillip Johnson, PBS documentary “In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy,” May 1995)

“Once we see, however, that the probability of life origi-nating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favourable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate….It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intel-ligence must reflect…higher intelligences…even to the limit of God…such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psy-chological rather than scientific.” (Sir Fred Hoyle, well-known British mathematician, astronomer, and cosmologist) &

Quotes from Scientists on EvolutionContinued from Page 13

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For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools… Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen…And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. Romans 1:20-28