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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Randall Younker: Current Issues in Creation in the Adventist Church

Randall Younker

The Scholarly Myths of the Double Creation and the Vaulted Heaven

Ah, okay, we'll go ahead and start the last little bit here.

We only have about 30 official minutes and I've got an hour and a half presentations, I'll do it in 30 minutes.

We'll cover a couple of these points that have become hot issues and show you how some of my colleagues and I deal with some of the Hebrew challenges have been brought forth.

I was hoping to get in some science stuff but you know actually as I look in the audience there's 2 or 3 people who are here who actually do the raw scientific stuff and I would refer you to the Geoscience Research Institute and some other great people here, Dr.

Ariel Roth, and there's a number of others I see here who are doing a lot of work and I think they're doing an excellent job at looking at some of the scientific issues.

But I'd like to come to a couple of problems for a few minutes and then we'll open this up for question and answer response and so forth.

1 of the questions I can remember when I was at PUC, a young Bible teacher up there, it was just about the time the story took place that I talked about in Sabbath school this morning.

1 of the physics professors came to me from PUC and he said, you know, Randy, what do you do with the problem of the 2 creation accounts?

Genesis 1 gives 1 creation account and Genesis 2 gives another 1.

And I kind of knew there were some differences in the creation accounts, you know, I was a Bible teacher.

But I hadn't really studied it from the historical critic perspective yet.

I wouldn't get that until I got to California State University in the University of Arizona where my professors there were full-fledged historical critics and you know bang I got the whole thing.

On a side note I'll say this very quick Maybe I'll have time to come back to it later.

1 of the first examples that my professor gave me at the California State University, why the Bible is not true, seemed like a little trivial thing at the time, but he said, you know, 1 reason we know the Bible is not true, historically true, is because of the camels mentioned in the patriarchal narratives, you know, the stories of Abraham and Jacob and Isaac and so forth, and I went, what?

Because, you know, I've been over to the Middle East, been there a lot now, and you see camels all over the place.

You know, it's hard to imagine the Middle East without camels, and I said, what do you mean no camels?

He said, yeah, the camels, they're mentioned in the patriarchal narratives, but we know from archeology, scientific evidence, that camels were not domesticated by human beings until well after the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so forth.

So that's 1 reason I know the Bible's not true, my professor told me, because of the reference to camels.

He said this is 1 of several examples of what we call an anachronism.

Should've put the pictures up in there because I actually have a whole story on the camel story.

And he said that anachronism is where something's chronologically out of place.

It'd be somewhat analogous to saying that George Washington went to his inauguration as President of the United States in a limousine, you know a motorized limousine, you know and the anachronism is because we know cars were not yet invented in the time of George Washington.

That's what we call a historical anachronism, it's out of time.

And he said, that's what we see all through the Hebrew writings and the camels is exhibit A.

When It says Abraham had camels or Job had camels.

We know that's not true because the camels were not domesticated until centuries after those guys were supposed to have been alive.

So that's 1 reason we know the Bible's not true.

And that actually led me, I remember going to the library at California State University and looking up all the stuff on historical criticism and the documentary hypothesis and all this kind of stuff.

It was the first time I've been confronted with it because even though I had some great teachers at Pacific Union College where I did my BA degree in religion and theology, same time I was working on the biology, they never warned me about that.

It's kind of like taking a biology class and never being told that there's a theory of evolution out there, you know?

I don't think do that anymore, regardless of where your professors come from.

I think pretty much all Adventists are aware of the theory of evolution.

I certainly was well trained in that before I got out into the real world.

Even my Adventist professors gave me a good background in the theory of evolution, even though they didn't believe it.

So this kind of caught me by surprise, and it almost lost my faith over this, because I saw the problems, didn't see any solutions immediately.

The reason I mention that 1 example is because many years later after I'd finished my PhD and I was doing archeology, I'd worked for many seasons in Israel and traveled all over the Middle East, you know, Greece and Turkey and Egypt.

And 1 summer, I had an opportunity to take a few of my students with me.

I think we had a couple of jeep loads and we were studying ancient inscriptions.

Now, 1 of the historical critical problems I was introduced to was the idea that Moses could not have written Genesis because Moses didn't know how to write in an alphabetic script.

Okay, I found out later, by the way, there's a lot of interesting things you learn about the history of scholarship, that most of the scholars saying that Moses couldn't write Genesis because he didn't know how to write, at least he didn't know how to write the alphabet, these were German scholars in pre-World War II Germany.

And they had the idea that the Jews could have, you know, been the earliest people to write the alphabet was totally unacceptable to them.

They could not have the Semitic peoples writing the alphabet and so they kind of erased that part of history.

And there's been a few papers done, scholarly papers showing, written by Israelis who are getting a little, you know, pointing out the great bias, the anti-Semitic bias by the Nazi German scholars who were trying to, you know, obliterate this part of the history.

Well, but that was still an interesting issue.

You know, was it invented before Abraham's time?

It'd be very hard to write the Bible in hieroglyphics.

Your Bible would be about this thick, you know, instead of like it is.

So anyway, it turned out archaeologists started finding little snippets of a very early alphabet in different places.

They found 2 or 3 examples in Palestine, but they also, over 100 years ago, they found 1 guy named Sir Flinders Peach, we found an example of the alphabet in some mountains north of the traditional Mount Sinai.

He was out there looking around for some archeological evidence of the ancient Egyptians.

It turns out the Egyptians, around the time of Moses, whether you believe in Moses or not, but anyway, around the time of Moses, the Egyptians, 18th Dynasty Egyptians, those are the ones we often associate with the time of the Exodus, Hatshepsut, that Moses III, Amenhotep II, if you're into the Egyptian stuff.

They were boonie crashing themselves in the northern Sinai area, north of Mount Sinai, and they found some turquoise mines, and they got a bunch of Semitic slaves, not necessarily Hebrews, could have been, but they got some Semitic slaves to dig these turquoise mines for them.

And those slaves, while they were working there, the Achaeans would write graffiti on the rocks.

And guess what they were using, the alphabet.

It turns out we call it the proto-Sinaitic alphabet.

It was a precursor to the later Hebrew alphabet.

And scholars now can link the 2 alphabets directly together, 1 evolved into the other.

So the alphabet did exist, and this was a alphabet that dated back to the pre-Moses times, perhaps even into the patriarchal period.

And so I had read about this inscription, and I wanted to see it for myself.

I'd seen the pictures and read the scholar reports, but you know, to be a good, credible teacher, you gotta see this stuff yourself, right?

And so I figured, okay, I'm gonna drive out there with 1 of my fellow professors, and I'll bring along a few of the lucky students that get to go along and see this stuff.

So we rented a couple of Jeeps, and we drove out, literally into the desert, where places were usually only bedou on camels ride around.

We were literally four-wheel driving in the sands of the Sinai.

Break down once in a while and hope you don't die out there in the wilderness like the Israelites and all that.

But eventually we got to the right mountain where they had seen these proto-Sinaitic inscriptions.

And so we stop our Jeep and we climb up to the mountain pass.

The desert's very interesting because you've got these sandy vast valleys, like you see in the movies, and then you got these very rugged bare mountains in between, so it's interesting topography.

So we climb up on this 1 mountain, and sure enough, we had an old photograph 100 years before, and the archaeologist, Sir Flinders Petrie, had made an X on the photograph, showing where the ancient alphabetic inscription was.

So, you know, we saw the mountain, matched up with the photograph perfectly.

If you've ever seen Indiana Jones, X never marks the spot.

We got up there and we found the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions.

There was the early copy of the alphabet.

And we, of course, were quite excited and we took our own pictures of that.

Since then, I should say that archeologists working in Egypt found an alphabet even earlier by a thousand years in Egypt.

So the idea that the alphabet was not around in Moses' time is a totally bogus idea.

It's been blown away by plenty of discoveries.

But at This time, we didn't know about that Egyptian discovery, so we were keen to see this.

Well, when we got up into this rocky mountain pass, and we're looking at the Proto-Sinaitic inscription, right next to it was an Egyptian inscription from the 12th Dynasty, and that helped date the other inscription, because we know when the 12th Dynasty was.

That goes back to the Patriarchal Period.

While I was looking at those 2 inscriptions, I noticed that on the rock face, there was a lot of pictorial graffiti.

We call these pictographs, or Petroglyphs is another name for them.

And while I was looking at the petroglyphs, I was stunned to see a picture of a camel.

And I could tell from the patina, you know these things when you carve into the rock, they go through a process, you know, oxidation, stuff like that, and they become decolorized.

You know, they get a funny color to them through the hundreds and even thousands of years.

And the patina matched perfectly these early alphabetic and Egyptian inscriptions.

The Cross, Death Before Sin, and Theistic Evolution: What Does The Bible Really Say?

We're delighted to see so many of you here, and I'm very pleased to be able to be here.

I'm gonna step over here, because that's bouncing my ear in a funny way.

Angie's right, it was about, I guess, last October.

We were trying to work out time and schedule when we'd be here, and we're delighted to be here.

There were some meetings this week on campus, so that gave me sort of a double excuse to come.

The Biblical Research Institute met Monday and Tuesday.

That's a general conference committee where about 40 scholars from around the world get together and wrestle with some of the theological issues that the church is confronting.

It's a real pleasure to kind of be with a bunch of folks that know their Greek and their Hebrew and their Latin and the history and we kind of wrestle with some of the challenges the church is facing.

And after a couple of days of that, we have a new committee actually started the last general conference called the Faith and Science Council and that's again about 40 individuals with training in various areas of science, biology, paleontology, geology, I happen to be an archaeologist and then we also get some theologians there, Old Testament, New Testament and systematic theologians And we spent 2 days discussing creation evolution issues.

It's a lot of fun for me to learn from my colleagues and we share ideas with each other.

So that seemed a good opportunity to be here and share a little bit here.

I'm sort of an informal person, and I know there's gonna be things written down, but if in the course of things there's something that you want clarified, don't hesitate to ask, because that's how we do it back at the seminary.

As I joked this morning, we're kind of programmed at the seminary to speak for 2 and a half hours because we don't have little blocks anymore, but I won't do that to you.

I'm just going to show you this afternoon my perspective.

I'm not an infallible person on these things.

I do have a little bit of training in science.

As you heard me mention this morning, I have a graduate degree in biology.

And I got into that area because of the creation evolution issues.

Not that the church was necessarily having back in the 70s, although I discovered later on that this has been a big issue in the church probably starting somewhere in the 50s and 60s, whether we believe in a six-day creation or not, or a recent creation or not.

But I was struggling with more fundamental issues about whether God had, whether He existed or not, and let alone the creation thing.

So I went to PUC, as I indicated this morning, to study biology because I was curious about that.

I was not really interested in becoming a biology teacher necessarily.

And I also majored in theology, religion, because I was kind of wondering, what does the Bible have to say about that?

I had no idea or interest necessarily becoming a Bible teacher or a scientist I just kind of went to those 2 areas because of these questions And so I'm just gonna share with you kind of my conclusions what I've seen in my journey as you learned this morning I eventually was diverted into the area of archaeology and for the last 30 plus years I've been a field archaeologist.

I've had the privilege of directing excavations.

I see Fred is here and he was on 1 of our digs, but over the years I got tired of digging in the trenches and I learned how to become a director of your project.

And So for the last probably 20 years, I've been directing my own excavations.

It's approved by the American Schools of Oriental Research.

That's an association of over 100 universities in the United States and elsewhere.

And I publish in those kinds of journals, so I'm used to working in the scientific arena.

But because of my training, I also did work in Old Testament, and I had to learn Hebrew and exposure to Greek, some Egyptian, French, and German, those kinds of things, So I've spent a part of my career also working in the Old Testament, and 1 of my favorite books to study is the book of Genesis, particularly the first few chapters because of the implications those chapters have for our understanding as a church in terms of creation.

So what I thought I'd do with you for a few minutes this afternoon is share with you some discoveries that I have made in my research in the Bible.

I understand this has become a bit of a hot issue here in Southern California creation, and there's a number of questions that pop up.

As I travel around the world, I probably should say a few things.

The church, probably 90, 95% of the church is very solidly behind a recent 6 day creation.

There's been some polls that have been conducted.

And as I travel around, I was just in Hong Kong 2 weeks ago, spent a week there with some of our Chinese pastors.

That in itself was rather interesting because they had pulled together for the first time ever, the mainland Chinese pastors, Seventh-day Adventist pastors, they, most of them had not even met each other.

And we got them down to Hong Kong, and they were at our Adventist college campus there, and they were meeting each other for the first time, speak different languages, Cantonese and Mandarin, and there was translation going on.

And they are growing churches like, to use an American phrase, gangbusters.

They have so many churches, They don't even have enough pastors for the churches and They even have to use I'm kind of saying this a little bit tongue in cheek, women are leading out in the churches over there.

There's 1 young woman in her 20s who is pastoring a church of 7, 000 members in China.

I'd say about 20% of the pastors are young women who love the Lord and they're working like crazy.

So there's some amazing miraculous things going on.

But my point is as I get to travel around the world, the vast majority of the Adventist church is solid behind our creation doctrine.

So that's sort of a unique thing in about 3 areas that I've discovered.

Australia down there, a few folks seem to argue about this.

Some of my colleagues and friends, some scientists, some theologians.

In Europe, particularly in parts of Germany, As I've traveled over there's a few people that don't believe in a recent six-day creation They kind of advocate theistic evolution and then a few little places in the United States including Southern, California They seem to you know, have some other views as well.

I know there's very educated people There's doctors professors who struggle with these issues They struggle with some of the scientific issues.

Sometimes they struggle with the biblical issues.

And again, having worked in those areas, I appreciate their problems.

My own journey has given me a sense of conviction on our doctrine.

Having said that, that doesn't mean we've got everything figured out.

There's a lot of things I face as an archeologist that there aren't immediate and easy answers for, but in the big picture, I still feel that this is what scripture teaches and I think this is what God's will for us is.

At the seminary, we actually have a class that's required by all ministers in training.

Each 1 have to take a course offered by Dr.

John Baldwin and myself, it's called Issues and Origins.

And in that class, we go through the biblical evidence for creation, the church's position.

So they're all systematically taken through the issues.

But we also tell them about the positive evidence from science and positive evidence from the Bible that supports our position.

And probably out of that class we usually average about a hundred students, ministers in training, each semester when we teach that class.

I'd say 90 to 95 percent come out of the class very affirmed in the church's position, about 5 percent do not.

They tend to think that theistic evolution is the way to go, so that's kind of the way this course works, but We're very glad to have the opportunity to talk with them and we rejoice in the fact that many come out, the vast majority come out feeling very solid about the church position.

And it's 1 of my privileges to go around when they're out in the real churches, we get a lot of opportunities to go out and speak with people about these issues.

So it's a hot topic in the church and that's kind of what goes on from my perspective and it's a lot of fun to be a part of that.

Most of my time is taken being a field archaeologist.

In fact I could very happily just go off into that topic, tell you about the exciting things we're finding over there.

We work as a biblical archeologist, I'm working in Jordan right now, and we've got a lot of artifacts that come right from the biblical period, and for me it's a lot of fun to see how these things relate to the biblical history and the biblical story.

So that's more of what I work in, but we'll delve a little bit this afternoon into some of the issues on creation and evolution.

Now, my question here, I was interested on our campus at Andrews University, we have a group of young people, similar to your Advent Hope, it sounds like, I think they have a different name, but they invited me to give a series of talks earlier this year.

Ironically, they were interested because of what's happening in Southern California.

You'll have to tell me what's happening here, you know, I don't know, but they seem to have heard some things and so they asked me to come and talk about the topic and so that's what we did.

We had 3 sessions, very well attended, kind of a room about this size and they were standing room only for there.

So apparently this is a big thing for them as well and they asked me to speak to the issue of can a Christian believe in evolution because that seems to be where our church is struggling right now.

I don't know of anybody in the Adventist church who's actually arguing, let's go with atheism, let's throw God out, it's kinda hard to be a Christian university and say we don't believe in God, so no one's going that far.

It seems like the debate is between the position of believing in a God who created the world in 6 literal 24 hour days a few thousand years ago versus a God who used an evolutionary process, millions of years of death, survival of the fittest and so forth to bring life into existence, including human beings.

Some people call that progressive creation.

Really the forms I see are more of what we'd call theistic evolution.

So right now in the church, the big debates between theistic evolution on the 1 hand and biblical creation in 6 days on the other.

So that's kind of where the struggle is from my perspective as I see it and as people come to me and describe to me what's going on.

Question and Answer

Okay, the first 1 is a question that I've wondered myself.

I've heard that dinosaurs were a creation of man that through genetic manipulation, now I haven't really read about that, but that's something that I've heard out there.

I participated in 1 of those digs, and there are paleontologists working all over the world, including in North America, that are digging these creatures up.

Second part of your question, did humans make them?

Yeah, What, within Adventist circles and some creationist circles, the suggestion is made that perhaps after the fall, that Satan or Satan-inspired humans practiced some kind of genetic experiments and created these monsters like Tyrannosaurus rex.

Sometimes they will allude to statements that Ellen White makes about there was, after the fall, the amalgamation of man and beast, and that perhaps the amalgamation of the beast refers to humans breeding animals and crossbreeding animals and created some of these monsters.

The fact is, as an archeologist, I don't know whether that's true or not.

To me, that's 1 of those things, you might call it speculation, maybe it's sanctified speculation.

A lot of people aren't quite sure what she's talking about Some people talk about crossbreeding between humans and animals.

I don't think that's what she meant But whether that refers to the dinosaurs, I honestly don't know to me It's a possibility but on the basis of what we have in the spirit of prophecy, the Bible and in science, I couldn't say that for sure.

Okay, so there are some mysteries that are yet to be.

I believe that God created a prototype for dinosaur, but just like, you know, the cats, you know, I don't think lions went around eating people initially, and Isaiah seems to suggest there'll come a time when the lion and the lamb will lay down together, and the lion won't gobble up the lamb.

So I would suspect that there were lions before the fall, and their practice was not to eat the lamb at that time, but something happened at the fall that changed them into a carnivorous animal.

So maybe reptiles or dinosaur kind of animals did the same thing.

Maybe it didn't require a eugenics experiment.

Today in today's ecosystem, carnivores are absolutely essential.

A lot of people say that shows that before the fall there had to be lions to clean up the world.

I know from a biological point that's a tricky question, however, it doesn't completely bother me.

I don't know what the pristine world looked like.

I don't know what role, you know, we have leaves decomposing, we have, you know, dead deer die in the woods and so forth.

All I know is that the Bible does seem to point to a different nature of things before, that what we have now is not the ideal, and that in the world to come, it will be different again.

Paul makes this incredibly unscientific statement that I tell you a mystery that this mortal flesh will put on immortality.

Now, from a biological perspective, I have no idea what that means.

I don't know what, you know, I've looked at flesh under a microscope, but it's always been mortal flesh.

I've never seen immortal flesh, so I don't know what that means and how that will work exactly, but I do believe in the resurrection.

I worked in a mortuary for a little while when I was working my way through college, and I remember seeing people pray for their dead ones to come back to life again.

I was very grateful when I was working here at night that none of them came back to life while I was there at least, but I do believe in a future resurrection and I share the hopes of a lot of those grieving families, but there's just a lot of things I don't understand and I prefer not to speculate on things I don't understand.

Okay, so you brought this up in your answer a little bit when you said that you don't know exactly what the world looked like.

Series

Randall Younker: Current Issues in Creation in the Adventist Church

Question and Answer

Transcript

Parent Series

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Attachments

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