Honestly Now, Do You REALLY Believe All of the Bible?
Dr. Roger G. Ford, Ph.D., P.E.
October 2017

The Indictment

We, as Christians, revere the Word of God, as we certainly should. From the Word, we learn of justification or getting right with God which is the whole, entire reason for the Word in the first place coupled with bringing God all the glory He is due.

However, really knowing God requires diligent study of God’s Word, else how are we to know how to please Him and do His Will? Take salvation, for example. Just getting “saved” by believing Jesus died for our sins, and that alone, does not guarantee eternal life. Really? Yes, definitively! Romans 10:9 says, “That if you confess with your mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Do you see the two components of being saved? Confessing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord involves both the mind and the heart. Belief from the heart that God raised Jesus from the dead means that Jesus is IN your heart indicating true belief that leads to salvation.

Paul goes on the say in Romans 10:10, “For with the heart one believes resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses resulting in salvation.” That verse encompasses what it truly means to be sure of eternal life for all of us. We must be justified or be made right with God in our hearts, not in our minds. What does that mean? There are many very knowledgeable scholars, even in seminaries, even in pulpits, that only know all there is to know ABOUT Jesus, but they do not believe in their hearts that God really did raise Jesus from the dead or that Jesus is Lord of their lives. Saying Jesus is Lord without believing in the heart that God raised Him from the dead does not lead to salvation. Ever looked that deep into your salvation before?

Jesus is God. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:14 adds additional clarity, “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His Glory, the Glory of the only Begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth.” Since we know that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16-17) [note the “all”], then we know that what Paul was telling the Romans is the absolute truth.

Getting to the point of this, “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name” (Edward Mote, 1834, William B. Bradbury, 1863). We lean on Jesus because the Holy Spirit testifies to our hearts that the Bible is true and to be believed and accepted. But, do we, as modern 21st century believers really believe ALL of the Bible? Are we fully convinced that every single word in the Bible is true and to be accepted without question? Or do we pick and choose what we wish were true and reject what we suspect is not true?

Fact or Fiction or Deceit?

The reason for this train of thought is to bring to our consciousness the fallacies that are taught in our schools, on television, in the media, and also, sadly, from many Christians. If we truly believe the Bible for our salvation because it tells us how to be recipients of eternal life, do we really believe all of the Bible or just the parts we want to believe? How do we reconcile the parts we don’t like or the parts we don’t believe? Plainly, if we reject, for any reason, any part of the Word of God, even the tiniest part, then we have no foundation for our faith at all! To believe in the things Jesus did on our behalf to provide the grace and mercy that leads to our being with Him for all eternity and then reject what the Holy Spirit directed Moses to write in Genesis about the Creation is egregious, is wrong, is very dangerous. Dangerous because of how rejecting even a small part of the Bible as true throws the entire rest of Scripture into the category of “maybe it’s true”. Then, your and my faith becomes just a fond wish backed by a book that may or may not be entirely true.

The most egregious error taught today and accepted by over 50% of Americans is that humans evolved from lower life forms and those lower life forms from inanimate material from the Big Bang. Only 42% believe in Creationism (Gallup, May 8-11, 2014). In the church, the news is a little better. The estimate of regular church attenders that believe in Creationism is over two-thirds, a much better but still sad number. Why the confusion? If all Christians believe the Bible, shouldn’t the number of Christians believing in Creationism be 100%? Why do Americans, and especially Christians, believe in any form of evolution at all?

The reason is we are taught evolution as fact in our secular schools, in almost all colleges including seminaries (only about four seminaries today out of 139 are true Creationism and 100% Bible-believing institutions according to John MacArthur), is because of the lack of belief in the Word of God in total! Genesis chapters 1-12 are also the Word of God just as John 3:16. But, many today in Christianity as well as most in the world believe we as a human race evolved from some “lower” form of life-like monkeys. Do you realize just what the implication is from that belief? We are animals just like all other animals. There is no “higher power”, no authority, no base of morality from which we could be held accountable for our actions.

Isn’t this Creation versus evolution controversy relatively new since Darwin published “The Origin of the Species” in 1859? (Incidentally, the complete title of Darwin’s book is “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” which reveals his quite blatant racism and elitism). The answer is decidedly not! Evolutionary thought goes back to pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610 – 546 BC) and Empedocles (c. 490 – 430 BC). And evolutionary thought is just that – thought, belief, conjecture, fond wish. Evolution is not fact since it cannot be proven. The scientific method that all reputable scientists should know and adhere to says for anything to be fact it has to be demonstrable and repeatable. Neither evolution nor Creationism can accomplish those requirements. Both must be believed to be accepted.

Evolutionists lie when they say evolution is fact because it cannot be demonstrated. Creationists simply state their firm belief in God’s Word that God created the universe and everything in it in six literal days because that is what the Word says. Simple. Both are beliefs that require faith. Evolution has no observable data, in fact, over the last century, almost all of evolution theory has been shown to be very questionable if not false. There are very reputable institutions today whose sole purpose is to defend Christianity and refute evolution such as the Institute for Creation Research located in Dallas. They have made literally dozens and dozens of startling refutations of evolutionary theory published in their journal “Acts and Facts”. As a small but not insignificant example, at the turn of the 20th century, so-called scientists said there were over 80 organs or systems in the human body that were vestigial or useless and a leftover from evolutionary past. Today, all of those “useless” organs or systems have been shown to be essential for our health and well-being. So much for evolutionary theory pertaining to our bodies and their functions.

The early church was influenced by Augustine (354-430 BC) who wrote that the creation story in the Book of Genesis should not be read too literally. This apparently caught on since the Roman Catholic church in 1517 taught the selling of indulgences (a method of raising money surreptitiously for the church by claiming the indulgences would “buy” forgiveness of sins), that salvation was by works not by grace alone through faith alone, the leader of the Church was the Pope not Jesus Christ, and that the Bible’s account of creation was incorrect since everyone knew that God could not have created the universe and everything in it in just six literal days. There had to be many, many thousands or even millions of years for the gradual development of the animals including man. It’s really hard to believe that anyone could believe that everything came out of nothing, but many still do!

Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, exactly 500 years ago. One of Luther’s sermons included a revealing viewpoint many Christians today need to take heed of, “From Moses, however, we know that 6,000 years ago the world did not exist. But of this no philosopher can in any way be persuaded…But all these (philosophers’) disputations, though subtle and clever, are not to the point in question…Equally useless is it to consider Moses in the beginning of his (Genesis) history as speaking mystically or allegorically…Moses spoke literally and plainly and neither allegorically nor figuratively; that is, he means that the world with all its (original) creatures was created in six days as he himself expressed it…Let us come at once to Moses as a far better teacher, whom we may more safely follow than we may philosophers, who dispute without the Word about things they do not understand.” Sounds like Luther truly believed the Bible. And how could he not after reading Jesus’ own words in John 5:44-47, “How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that [cometh] from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is [one] that accuseth you, [even] Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?” Jesus testified to the truth of Moses written words in the Pentateuch, and we believe what Jesus said, right? Then believe that He, Jesus the Creator God, made the universe in six literal days just as Moses wrote.

There is the question, always, that God did not mean literal days when He made the universe. A brief study of the Hebrew word for “day” yields the Hebrew word “yom” which almost always refers to a literal 24-hour day. The times that is does not, it refers to a season of life or a man’s life as in “the day of Moses”. But that in itself is limited in scope and certainly never refers to millions or billions of years. Besides, God is omnipotent and omniscient, all-powerful and all-knowing, so don’t you think He is capable of creating everything in six literal days? But, since that is true, and he is all-powerful, why didn’t He make everything in a split second? He could have if He wanted to, right? Sure, but He would not have set the pattern He desires for all His children that they should work or toil six days and rest the seventh. We should follow the Lord’s example not only in our work week but in striving to be like Him – sinless!

One objection to Creationism is the appearance of the Earth. It certainly looks old, the rocks and mountains appear to show many eons of erosion and wear, don’t they? But, again, investigation into the evidence shows us many very enlightening details of our Earth’s life. We find helium in rocks today, but that should be impossible if the rocks were millions of years old. We find carbon 14 in bones and fossils when all carbon 14 degrades in less than 100,000 years, so fossils cannot be millions of years old when carbon 14 is found in them. Diamond are supposed to be millions of years old, yet carbon 14 is evident in all diamonds that are not manmade.

But what about the fossils that have turned to stone? That takes millions of years, right? No, many trees and even a fedora left in a cave turned to stone in just a few years, less than 50. We find dinosaur tracks in stone alongside human prints (Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Texas). In fact, one such dinosaur print had a human print inside it.

Didn’t the Grand Canyon very slowly, over millions of years, erode to its present appearance? Was there really a river sometimes in the ancient past that was ten miles wide? Why do the sediment layers displayed in the Grand Canyon NOT show erosion between the layers? If the layers were laid down over thousands of years each, why do the layers only show level, clean, unwavering between them with no evidence of any erosion whatsoever? The reason? Those layers were laid down by the Flood of Noah since different densities of sediment will precipitate at different rates leaving distinct layers as they settle to the ocean floor. Then as the earth rose with the water from the Flood returning, in part, to its original place, under the earth, the distinct layers would be visible due to the massive water movement. The Coconino Sandstone layer is found all around the world. This would be impossible aside from a global flood that would disperse the sandstone very easily.

Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980. Spirit Lake high up on the mountain broke free after millions of tons of ash, volcanic rock, and debris was deposited to the East from the eruption. After the lake emptied, there was a 600-foot-deep mini-Grand Canyon left behind with the same distinct layering seen in the Grand Canyon itself. And this deep canyon formed in days, not millions of years.

So, when was Noah’s Flood since we know it happened because it is described in detail in Genesis 6 to 9? We go back to the genealogies of the patriarchs in Genesis 5, and we can accurately determine how long from the sin of Adam to the death of Methuselah and the Flood of Noah really was in years. The following chart is from ConformingToJesus.com, and it very well depicts the time of the Flood as 1656 A.M. (Anno Mundi – year of Creation). Noah was 600 years old at the time of the Flood, and he lived another 350 after the Flood because his DNA was more perfect than those that came after him, plus the cosmic ray deterioration after the Flood that did not happen before the Flood due to the canopy that surrounded the Earth. This means that the Flood occurred in 2344 B.C. making the present day almost exactly 6,000 years from Creation since it’s been 2,000 years since Christ’s birth or the dividing occurrence between B.C. and A.D. (1656 + 2344 + 2000 = 6000) Wow! Only 6,000 years, not millions or billions!

Interesting to note that Abraham was alive while his ancestor, Shem, was alive. That means they could have met and spoken to each other. It is my belief that Shem could very well have been the Priest/King Melchizedek, but that is a subject for another article.

Conclusion

The main point here is to show that when a Christian begins to realize that the Bible is true in every word, phrase, paragraph, book, or division (OT and NT), then clarity and wonder emerges. God is beyond our complete understanding, to be sure. But, He has revealed Himself enough so that we can behold His Glory with our finite minds. His Creation is beyond magnificent. Just imagine what it was like before sin entered the world.

Really, the concluding argument comes from our Lord Jesus Christ! He said in Mark 13:19, “For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.” This directly affirms the biblical doctrine of sudden creation by God, not some inexplicable big bang where everything came out of nothing. Jesus lived in a pagan, evolutionary world. The Epicureans were atheistic but they were also evolutionists. The other philosophers of Jesus’ day like the Stoics, the Platonists, and the Gnostics believed in pantheism or that God is everything, in everything, so that evolution comes from God being in everything. But Christ was a creationist! Evolutionists believe in an eternal cosmos, but Jesus said the universe had a beginning and mankind was there from the beginning. Mark 10:6 says, “…from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female (speaking of Adam and Eve)”.

Accepting God’s Word, every bit of it, as truth without question is not only essential to true faith, it is imperative to ward off the vain philosophies of man. Colossians 2:8 warns us rather matter-of-factly, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Evolutionists, theologians, sociologists, scientists, even some Christians can be deceivers led by Satan to confuse and destroy your faith in God’s Word. Don’t let them do it. Read, study, meditate, research, confirm, verify, and believe what God has told us all through 40 different authors over two millennia – that the Bible is, indeed, God’s Word, every word of it. If you pick and choose from it what you will or will not believe, you should question your faith and your commitment to God. God loves you and wants you to be confident in Him. Believe His Word, and the confidence flows like a river of peace. “O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea” (Isaiah 48:18)