It’s no secret that a drop of poison in a glass of pure water can be just as deadly as a whole glass of pure poison.
 
Nor is it any secret that the deadliest of all poisons is the kind that oh-so-subtly twists the truth about the word of God.
 
I was reminded of this recently in visiting a website called BibleProject.com—a site that had been enthusiastically endorsed some months ago by a solid Christian who appreciated its use of animation and friendly, hip voiceovers. I’d taken a quick look at it back then, agreeing that this looked like very good stuff for youngsters.
 
But this time, I looked at a video entitled New Testament Letters: Literary Context. Here, in part, is what the voiceover said about how the apostle Paul went about writing his epistles:
 
“Paul didn’t work or write alone … [he] was constantly with his missionary teammates on the road, working out ideas as they talked and debated and talked together. And Paul would have collected speeches, poems and prayers in notebooks … And so Paul would get the right teammates in a room and start pulling together old and new material. Then they would hire a professional scribe and start creating drafts until they were satisfied with how it worked together as one whole.”
 
Which, of course, is absolute hogwash! The entire Bible, including Paul’s epistles, were informed and inspired by God Himself, not by a group of men looking for something that would sound good to itching ears.
 
The Bible tells us, in no uncertain terms, that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). This is the foundation of genuine Christianity and saving faith. It is the rock-solid truth upon which born-again believers can rest, forever assured that every last word is eternally trustworthy.
 
To say that the word of God is anything less—like the work of mere men—is blasphemy designed to let casual “believers” shrug off anything that doesn’t suit their fancy.
 
I don’t know how much of this false teaching there is at BibleProject.com. I found my one drop of poison in my second visit, and won’t be returning again.
 
Interestingly, I talked with the Christian who originally pointed me to the site and learned that she, too, had recently come across something there that made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t recall what it was, but perhaps it’s safe to say that there are at least two drops of poison to be found on this site. Beware!

Searching in vain for a favorite old novel the other day, I stumbled across Dr. Jerry Bergman's excellent book C. S. Lewis, Anti-Darwinist: A Careful Examination of the Development of His Views on Darwinism (Wipf and Stock, 2016). And what a happy time I had paging through it again, reviewing the case Dr. Bergman made that super-intellectual Lewis had rejected Darwinism in all its forms. This, in spite of the fact that anti-Darwinism was far from conventional wisdom in his day, before the modern creation-science movement had begun amassing evidence that the Genesis account of our origins is true.

Dr. Bergman has done a masterful (and highly entertaining) job of documenting Lewis’s unfolding thoughts on the subject, and proving that he was indeed an increasingly belligerent opponent of evolution theory. In the process, he has peppered his report with fascinating facts to address virtually any readers’ interests.
 
We learn, for instance, that Arthur J. Balfour (whose Balfour Declaration paved the way for the restoration of the nation of Israel in 1948) was a Christian apologist and anti-Darwinist whose ideas “permeate the first five chapters of Lewis’s book Miracles.”
 
We find that Lewis posed an important question long before the oft-cited “you can’t figure out where a PC came from by examining it” advice of modern apologists: “You have to go outside the sequence of engines, into the world of men, to find the real originator of the Rocket,” he wrote. “Is it not equally reasonable to look outside Nature for the real Originator of the natural order?”
 
We see that Lewis understood only too well the motives of evolution theory’s original champions: “Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend … simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice?” he asked. “Was it devised not to get the facts but to keep out God?”
 
And we learn that Lewis’s hostility towards evolution theory grew over the years, to the point where he released a public attack on it, albeit pseudonymously, in the form of a mocking poem entitled “Evolutionary Hymn” (1957).
 
Ever since I stopped studying Lewis and started studying the Bible what seems like a lifetime ago, I have had major problems with certain aspects of Lewisian soteriology. But Dr. Bergman's book made me appreciate Lewis’s writing once again – and, for the first time, his view of our origins.  

Intrigued? You'll find C. S. Lewis, Anti-Darwinist wherever books are sold, as they say -- including here at Amazon. 

When exactly did truth become a question of one person's worldview vs. another's? Why did we allow feelings to fill the void left by its demise? And what can we possibly do to restore it to its rightful place? 

These are important questions. If we remain disinterested in truth, we will remain alienated from our Creator. And that undoubtedly means not only a dismal future for our nation in this life, but perhaps for a majority of our citizens through all eternity.
 
I began pondering these questions early on in my search for ultimate truth, particularly as I tried to share my most stunning discoveries with a skeptical girlfriend named Anne. Several of these forays are outlined in my memoir Heaven Without Her. Here, for instance, is what I reported after I'd unloaded some heavy-duty scientific artillery on her during a round of golf, apparently missing all my targets that day:
 
What I’d shared with Anne was just the tip of the iceberg in the case against evolution theory’s chance-plus-time idea–and therefore in the case for an Intelligent Designer.
 
I doubt that I’d convinced her of anything that day. Still, someone had obviously been planting seeds of belief in her heart, and maybe I’d watered them a little. And maybe they would one day germinate and grow into a faith that would crush her doubts just as surely as it had mine.
 
Reflecting on our conversation later that night, sitting at my kitchen table while Dave and the dogs snoozed in the living room, I longed for a day when Anne would be sitting firmly on the fence on this issue, needing only a good shove to fall onto the side of what I now knew was the Truth.
 
I flipped through my Bible and pulled out a page of quotes that I’d typed up in anticipation of such a day. They just might do the job.
 
My favorite was from evolutionist Rich Lewontin, who wrote in the January 9, 1997, issue of The New York Review:

•  We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to … produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive … Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.  (Richard Lewontin, “Billions and billions of demons,” The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997) 

Running a close second in my heart was this quote from Aldous Huxley of Brave New World fame, whose grandfather Thomas Huxley had been one of the earliest and most ardent promoters of Darwin’s theories:

• I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do ... For myself . . . the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation . . . We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom . . .  (Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, London: Chatto & Windus, 1938, 270, 272-273)

 
Anne wouldn’t consider these quotes evidence, I knew. Nor did I, not really. I just found it incredibly interesting, not to mention heartbreaking, that these prominent opinion leaders shut God out for reasons other than the pursuit of truth–and then participated in foisting these teachings on entire generations of children.
 
--From Heaven Without Her, pages 121-122

An old friend of mine recently said she’d been taught that the Bible’s accounts of Noah and Jonah are merely parables that never happened.

Is that so?

And does it really matter?
 
In a nutshell: No, and quite possibly. These are both historical accounts—real history. And yes indeed, our take on these accounts could have implications for where we each will spend eternity.
 
So let’s take a closer look. (For a deep dive, you’ll need to do some research. Here’s a good place to start.)     
 
What does the Bible say?
 
First of all, how does the Bible itself treat these accounts?
 
Fact is, both are verified multiple times throughout both Old and New Testaments. For instance, check out Jesus’ confirmation of the historicity of Jonah in Matthew 12, and of Noah in Luke 17.
 
Yes, many of us have been taught since childhood that Noah and Jonah were just stories designed to teach us--well, something or other. But were our teachers eye-witnesses to these events? Were they more reliable truth-tellers than the Bible’s writers? Than Jesus?
 
Second, to quote virtually every unbeliever since Pontius Pilate, what is truth?
 
I know the accounts of Noah and Jonah sound like science fiction to skeptics. But are they? Or are they simply demonstrations of the supernatural power of the God who created the universe and everything in it?
 
Does “goo to the zoo to you” make more sense?
 
Are supernatural explanations more fantastic than the “goo to the zoo to you” stories we’ve been spoon-fed since childhood?
 
Think about it: We’ve been taught ad nauseam that evolution is fact. But dig into the subject even superficially, and we find that the evidence does not support this theory, that it instead points straight to the supernatural.
 
As a starting point, think back to what we've been told about the origins of this universe, when “nothing that was something” allegedly exploded into “everything.” Where did all that “nothing that was something” come from? What caused it to explode? Where did the space it occupied come from? And how about time--where'd that come from?
 
There is in fact no evidence that would support, via natural mechanisms, the sudden appearance of space, matter, energy and time. There are not even any credible theories being bandied about. Instead, evolutionists pull the “ignore the man behind the curtain” bait-and-switch to turn our attention to fossils (which in truth prove precisely nothing, but that's another subject entirely).
 
Are Noah and Jonah really so outlandish?
 
Now let’s apply our critical thinking skills to these supposedly fictitious Old  Testament “stories.”
 
Take the Genesis account of Noah and the global flood, for instance: What is so fantastic about that? We see the geological evidence of it everywhere. Look at aerial photos of the Grand Canyon, and consider what makes more sense – that the “mighty” Colorado River carved the whole thing out, or an enormous flood?  (Note that the world’s real-life Chicken Littles are warning us of global catastrophe due to gas-ridden cows and plastic straws, and heads of state worldwide somehow find that perfectly reasonable. But not the Genesis flood.)
 
Or leap over to the book of Jonah. Is it really impossible for a man to be swallowed by a great fish and survive for three days? Certainly not when the Creator of the universe is in charge; Jesus Himself said, “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

To be sure, there are stories out there of modern-day Jonahs being swallowed by whales. I don’t know that any have been confirmed, however. Most likely, Jonah’s experience was a one-time supernatural event. Do one-time events need subsequent repetition to be proven true? If so, then hmmmm, how come all those evolutionary scientists are still trusting in the Big Bang theory?
 
What's the problem?
 
The trouble is that skeptics insist on trying to assign natural causes to supernatural events. That’s simply not necessary when the miraculous is not only possible, but in evidence everywhere we look.
 
For proof, check out your children and grandchildren. How did those eyes evolve, one step at a time? How did their circulatory systems come to be, bit by bit? How about their immune systems? Their ears? GI systems? Brains?
 
Darwin himself said, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
 
Poof!
 
To learn more about this singularly critical subject, pick up a copy of microbiologist Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box. It’s enough to bring any honest investigator back to Square One in considering the nature of our very existence.
 
What difference does it make?
 
To cut to the chase: Do we need to believe in the historicity of Noah and Jonah in order to get to heaven?
 
I guess I wouldn’t go that far. But we do need to trust in the Jesus who has revealed Himself in scripture. I’m glad I’m not the judge of how broadly one needs to apply that trust in order to become a heaven-bound child of God; I suppose that there are genuine Christians reading this right now who have embraced evolutionary theory and consider both Noah and Jonah fictional characters.
 
But do you suppose God might expect us to examine these issues, if we have the time and resources, before dismissing parts of His word as mere fiction? Perhaps to weigh the evidence? I suspect He might.
 
Here’s the rub: Once we start blowing off anything in the Bible as merely a “story,” we may start feeling free to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit our personal ideas of what’s right, or what makes sense. To cut to the chase once more, we may start feeling free to dismiss Jesus’ claim to be “the way, the truth and the life,” to ignore His assurance that “no man comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14).
 
This is what that great scientist and theologian Oprah Winfrey did when she declared, "There couldn’t possibly be just one way [to God].” Sadly, unless she repents and trusts in Christ before she draws her last breath, she may be in for a rude awakening when she stands before Him in judgment.
 
Ah, what do you know?
 
For three long decades, I was the ultimate atheist. Then my heart was shattered, causing me to set out on an in-depth intellectual journey that lasted well over a year.
 
My questions: Is there a God? If so, which one? And can I possibly find this theoretical heaven apart from the Christianity that had been trying so diligently to ruin my good times?
 
I detailed this journey in my memoir Heaven Without Her. If you’re interested, you can probably find a used copy for just pennies online. Suffice to say, the scientific, historical and prophetic evidence I encountered proved to my complete satisfaction that the Bible was supernaturally inspired and is inerrant from first word to last.
 
Which means I can trust everything it says—including what it says about eternal joy.
 
If you have doubts, I urge you to investigate it for yourself. Now, before it’s too late.

Some years ago, an aggressively atheistic client of mine sent me the "string theory" video below, I suppose as evidence that Dr. Michio Kaku is one brilliant guy and that "science" is hot on the trail of the ultimate in truth and eternal survival techniques. 

And indeed, I have heard many discussions of string theory in the past, but never before have I been so totally blown away by the absurdity of these ideas--perhaps because Dr. Michio Kaku does such a great job of simplifying them, so that one can focus not on the "huh?!?" but on the sheer nonsense of it all.

This theorizing about multiverses, for instance--looking "beyond the big bang." It's just one more way of evading the most fundamental question: where did everything come from? If time, space and matter created themselves (an absurdity from the get-go), how'd it happen? (Never mind that no one has ever proven the big bang, except in the "it must have happened this way" sense, which no reasonable observer would consider proof of anything except an active imagination. But let's pretend it's true, shall we, so we can now venture beyond it?) 

Dr. Kaku also does a great job of explaining these theoretical worm holes between theoretical universes. Trouble is, we don't know (and cannot know) if any of these fantasies even exist, which makes his query about the ease of travel between universes via worm holes especially bizarre. 

He actually--really, you can't make this stuff up!–Dr. Kaku invokes Alice in Wonderland and The Time Machine, as if Carroll and Wells were really on to something worthy of serious study. It reminds me of my favorite quote from my atheist days: "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast," said the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass.

And the idea that our universe must burn out and die (as opposed to all those other universes?)--well, that would be true enough if it were left to its own devices, I suppose. And indeed, in this scenario, jumping into a fast worm hole to the next universe might be the only way to escape such an event if you just happen to be alive "trillions of years from now" when our universe breathes its last. 

But the fact is, no matter what universe you occupy, real or imaginary, no human being escapes physical death. In truth, only one "theory" provides mankind with an everlasting escape from it, and that's the gospel of Jesus Christ--detailed in the eminently provable Bible. 

One is tempted to find the ideas of "science so-called" mere comedy. But in truth, it's nothing less than eternal tragedy for those who trust in it. It is in fact heartbreaking to see all this time and energy and money wasted on a search for life and truth apart from the Creator and His word. 

"Death is swallowed up in victory" wrote the apostle Paul in the Bible's great resurrection chapter, 1 Corinthians 15. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" 

Now that's a quote worthy of serious study.