The curriculum for the course at the First Baptist Church, Troy, Michigan, Spring 2009

Understanding Our Age

Revised Schedule: Revised February 8, 2009 to reflect cancellation of the class on Wednesday, February 11 by the church for other church activies. The schedule has been moved out one week to compensate. Objective: We live in an age in which the mystery of iniquity is at work, attempting to prepare the world for the antichrist. The age denies the existence and activity of a living Creator God. Evolution is a tool used by Satan and his followers to persuade people that honesty concerning matters of science will force a person into evolution as the underlying explanation of our origin and existence. Thus, the issues of creation science are key towards understanding the issues of today. However, ramifications of these issues go far beyond an intellectual discussion of creation and evolution. Humanism, new-age, and a new form of idolatry called the self organizing universe are all interlocking pieces, with evolutionary theory being the glue that holds them together. This presentation will be a balance between Biblical teaching of doctrinal issues and technical issues from science. Understanding these things is essential for us to be able to identify properly Satans schemes and understand how to respond to them. The technical issues will be presented as nearly as possible from an overview instead of detailed perspective, so that a lay person should be able to get the gist of the arguments. Much of the material to be presented is unique and is available only in these presentations. Indeed, the material to be presented in six of the sessions is currently in the process of preparation for future articles in various creation science publications. Much of the information and many basic concepts to be presented is currently not available anywhere except in this series at the church.

Target sessions:
1. January 14, 2009. The significance of faith. Everything about the Christian walk centers around believing what God has said. Most problems come because of peoples unwillingness to take what God says at face value. Satans attack on Eve will be examined in depth, showing how Satan presents lies to get people to disbelieve and then entices them through various lusts to act in accordance with their disbelief. Evolution is the key tool Satan uses today to undermine peoples confidence in the Word of God. Understanding these issues is critical for proper Christian growth. 2. January 21, 2009. Without excuse. A number of common things will be discussed, showing how man is without excuse for disbelief. At every level, from the existence of art, to medicines and herbs that go bad in less than a decade, to simple, basic issues stumping biochemists all become illustrations of being without excuse, per Romans 1:22. A practical session on how evolution and a natural origin of life are impossible. Most of it will be easy for a lay person to understand but the most thoroughly trained scientist cannot legitimately refute it. A lot of this material will be taken from past and future articles in the series Without Excuse currently being presented in each issue of Creation Matters.

3. January 28, 2009. Biblical kinds. Many university students have responded to arguments against the possibility of evolution by claiming these arguments are meaningless since the fossil record proves that evolution did take place. However, they do not consider two things. First, Darwin stated that the fossil record actually teaches against his theory and explained why. Second, the doctrine of Biblical kinds presented in Genesis 1 fits the observed evidence far better than does evolutionary theory. Hybrids of Lions and Tigers and many other cats will be shown to illustrate the issue. The reality is that the only known key to properly understanding the observed fossil record is found in the book of Genesis. This material is in the process of preparation for a potential future article in Creation Matters. 4. February 4, 2009. Darwins Imaginary Evidence. Darwins book, the Origin of Species, is the foundation of the modern evolutionary movement. What he wrote about natural selection and microevolution is actually good science; it even dovetails with our previous session on Biblical kinds. However, when Darwin tries to extrapolate small scale, microevolution into large-scale macroevolution, he admits that the observed evidence contradicts his theory. He then imagines reasons why the observed evidence is invalid and proceeds to give priority to his imagined evidence. When even this is beyond him, he imagines that he should be able to imagine it, so he then gives imagined imaginary evidence priority over observed evidence. This is such poor science it is laughable. It is important, though, because modern evolutionists copy his example of methodology. They are not as interested in truth as in explaining away anything which contradicts their desire for evolution to be true. This material is being prepared for presentation to Creation Matters for publication. February 11, 2009. All classes at the church are cancelled. 5. February 18, 2009. Noahs flood. Issues about the ark. Fossils are only laid down under flood conditions. World-wide evidence of a world-wide flood. 6. February 25, 2009. Entropy. Things naturally fall apart. You do not expect a toy store to look better after a group of kids spend time in it than before. A boy sneaking a trumpet into a concert and blowing it without warning and at random is very unlikely to improve on the performance. These kinds of issues demonstrate how the organization exhibited by living systems is impossible to come about through random, chance activity. The content is based on a feature article recently published in Creation Matters. 7. March 4, 2009. Arguments from biochemistry. Using tinkertoys and other illustrations to demonstrate a little bit about enzymes, it will be shown how it is chemically impossible for one enzyme to evolve into another one. This argument utterly destroys the possibility of evolution into new forms at any level. There is much original work in this session. This material is being prepared for a journal article in the Creation Research Quarterly of the Creation Research Society. 8. March 11, 2009. Age of the earth. Whenever evolutionists get backed into a corner by a creationist exposing their twists and fabrications, they like to pull out their trump card. More specifically, they claim that radiometric dating and red-shifted light from distant galaxies prove that the earth and the universe have been around a long time. Therefore, the other arguments do

not matter. The problem is with our lack of knowledge, not with the fact of evolution. However, like everything else an evolutionist touches, the observations concerning these issues also get distorted and misrepresented in the evolutionary interpretation of the evidence. 9. March 18, 2009. Coded Information. Living organisms may be viewed as codedinformation driven machines. Such machines require an Intelligent Designer for their origin. What is coded information, such as used in living systems, in computers, and in communication systems? coded information is the representation of meaning using a set of symbols arranged according to a code. The relationship between the meaning and the symbols is abstract. Abstract concepts require intelligence to define, understand and use. Natural processes do not innately think and are therefore incapable of dealing with the abstraction required to create information-driven systems. Hence, the existence of living organisms based on information systems absolutely requires a Creator God. This material is being prepared for a journal article in the Creation Research Quarterly of the Creation Research Society. 10. March 25, 2009. Scientists who believed. It is a well-hidden secret in modern textbooks, but almost every field of modern science was founded by a Bible believing Christian. Over a dozen fields and their founders will be discussed. Chemistry, anesthesiology, stratigraphy, genetics, most branches of physics, and oceanography are among the sciences whose foundational work was laid by Christians who acknowledged the workings of the God of the Bible as Creator. Typically, they viewed science as a means of seeing Gods wisdom at work in order to be more in awe of His glory. 11. April 1, 2009. Humanism and the New Age Movement: The philosophy that man is his own God. Humanism will be examined from a Biblical perspective. There will also be a discussion of how the U.S. Supreme Court seems to base its decisions more on the humanist manifestos than the U.S. constitution. Humanism leaves one spiritually empty. The New Age movement is a Satanic alternative to fill the vacuum. 12. April 8, 2009. Spiritual Pornography (An extension of the session on the New Age Movement). Harry Potter etc. incites lusts for idolatry and the occult in young people. Seeing how strong the attraction for these things were to those in the Old Testament and how disastrous they were for their relationship with God, they should be viewed as more dangerous to our youth than regular pornography. Yet, almost everyone, saved and unsaved alike, acknowledges regular pornography is improper for children. How much worse is Harry Potter! 13. The spirit of the age. The issue of evolution is not an isolated issue. It fits into a bigger picture of how Satan is striving to bring the Anti-Christ to power. Hysslops Two Babylons as well as some personal historical research confirming his analysis will be presented, showing that what lies behind a lot of the politics of the world today is a fulfillment of the lady rides the beast as she prepares for the appearing of the anti-christ. We need to understand these issues to understand the battle, but this battle is the Lords, not ours. The Lord Himself will restrain the lady and prevent her from achieving her goals until the restraints are removed at the rapture. Our battle responsibility is to preach the Gospel and declare that there is a Living God who created the universe and is still in control. In the Babylonian system, the priest determines

what is true for those under him, who are not allowed to question him. For them it is true because he says it is true. This attitude is pervasive in academia today, particularly concerning issues like evolution. It is the basis for courts not allowing evidence against evolution to be presented in public schools. Evolution is to be considered fact by decree of those in authority, not by evidence. 14. April 15, 2009. The new idolatry: the self-organizing universe. In an effort to explain away God, there is a growing group of people promoting the concept of the self-organizing universe. From their perspective, the universe itself is the source of the organization we see around us. Therefore, we should honor the universe as creator and not the God of the Bible. This train of thought merges together aspects of traditional idolatry and modern materialistic science. Ilya Prigogine received the 1977 Nobel Prize in chemistry for foundational work in this area. His original observations, which apply only to very narrow domains extremely limited in scope and duration, are extrapolated into independent entities of permanent duration and unlimited scope and ever increasing complexity. The extrapolations are all speculative with no experimental evidence to confirm them. Even though this heresy is rapidly gaining momentum, there are a few basic principles which are simple to understand which effectively destroy its foundational basis. Nonetheless, it is sweeping academia today. I believe this movement provides the means to allow materialistic scientists to become open idolators, fitting in with the works and beliefs described in the book of Revelation concerning the coming tribulation period. This material is being prepared for an article in Creation Matters. 15. April 22, 2009. God Expects Glory. Romans 1 teaches God gives people enough light that it becomes sin not to honor God as Creator by giving Him thanksgiving and glory. This sin is so great as to cause God to deal with men in wrath as He gives them over to various sins of depravity. If the underlying cause of the moral depravity of our modern age is a judgment from God because of rejection of His person, then declaring Him as Creator is actually the most effective means of fighting the depravity. The teaching of evolution in the schools is one of the most evil characteristics of our age. Theistic evolution is really nothing more than disbelief, a pretense of believing some of what God says while wanting to appease evolutionary God-haters more than pleasing God. God expects glory. Personal background: Tim Stout has a B.S. from physics from UCLA and has studied at the San Francisco Baptist Seminary. He has twelve years in the pastorate plus 4 years in a campus ministry mostly focused at the University of California at Berkeley. He has received 4 U.S. Patents in desalination (drinking water from the ocean) and has worked as a design engineer in industry for over 30 years. He has had several major articles published in Creation Matters, a publication of the Creation Research Society. He also authors a regular series of articles for Creation Matters entitled Without Excuse. The testimony of , These articles discuss various observations from science which demonstrate why a person is without excuse for not recognizing God as Creator because of the testimony of natural revelation.