Is Big Bang Cosmology Consistent with Scripture?

By Alex Murashko , Christian Post Reporter
May 8, 2013|7:15 am

The scientific belief that everything in the universe came from nothing before there was a "Big Bang," or a moment of creation, is something that all Christians and scientists can agree on, says a leading Christian apologist. Also, J. Warner Wallace argues that the primary premise of Big Bang Cosmology, that everything came from nothing, is consistent with Scripture.

"There are good scientific reasons to believe, good evidential reasons to believe that all space, time, and matter have a beginning. This idea that everything (space, time, and matter) came from nothing is the foundational premise of Big Bang Cosmology," Wallace told The Christian Post. "It turns out that the primary proposal is absolutely consistent with what we see in Scripture – that God has created everything from nothing and that moment of Creation is something that I see as having good evidence to support such a thing from Big Bang Cosmology."

Wallace, who recently released his book, Cold-Case Christianity, said that there are some churches that have a certain view of the earth or the Creation model and for whatever reason are hesitant to embrace even the notion of Big Bang Cosmology.

"If you boil it down to its essence, it is that everything came from nothing and I think that is a premise that most of us Christians would affirm," he said. "A Christian view of Creation and Big Bang Cosmology do not conflict."

Wallace explained that typically, Christians that hold onto a "young earth" model of Creation have a problem with resolving the age of the universe with Big Bang Cosmology because it implies that the universe is billions of years old.

"From my perspective that's a separate argument," he said.

"That the universe came from nothing is a point of agreement between Christians and scientists who embrace Big Bang Cosmology. This is one area in which both of us can agree. We may differ and argue about the age of the universe, that some Christians accept an ancient age of the universe and they would have no problem with the dating of the universe," Wallace continued. "Other Christians would say, 'No, I believe in a younger universe,' and we can have that argument. But the issue about whether or not everything came from nothing is a point of agreement between what science shows us and what the Scriptures reveal."

He also argues that simply because he acknowledges Big Bang Cosmology does not mean he is affirming all scientific "natural answers" to questions about the earth and universe.

"I am not saying that when I embrace Big Bang Cosmology that I can only find answers that are described by physical laws, physical causes," Wallace said. "There are many causes that are supernatural. God is involved in the creative process, period."

The question becomes, "What is sufficient to cause the beginning of all space, time, and matter?"

"It seems to me that 'thing' would have to be awfully powerful," Wallace said. "What we see as the result of science looking at issues such as the second law of thermal dynamics, the cosmic background radiation that we see in the universe, … These are things that point to a past and a beginning... and more and more people are willing to accept [this premise].

"That, to Christians, should sound familiar because that is what we see in Genesis 1 where God brings into existence everything from nothing."

He adds, "It's reasonable to say that big bangs require big bangers. What we are really saying is that the big banger here is God."

Wallace, who is a cold-case homicide detective and once a devout atheist, is one of several Christian apologists scheduled to speak and participate in panel discussions at Stand To Reason's 20th Anniversary Conference at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., this coming weekend. He became a Christ follower in 1996, and took an evidential approach to truth as he examined the Christian worldview. He earned a Master's Degree in Theological Studies from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Wallace is a "Christian case maker" at Stand to Reason.

Wallace's most recent blog post on Big Bang Cosmology can be found at http://www.christianpost.com/news/big-bang-cosmology-is-consistent-with-scripture-95465/#DlG6yqiqtCEGhk5B.99

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Why We Should Mistrust the Government by Andrew Napolitano

By Andrew P. Napolitano, Creators Syndicate, May 8, 2013

It should come as no surprise that President Obama told Ohio State students at graduation ceremonies last week that they should not question authority and they should reject the calls of those who do. He argued that “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” has been so successful that trusting the government is the same as trusting ourselves; hence, challenging the government is the same as challenging ourselves. And he blasted those who incessantly warn of government tyranny.

Yet, mistrust of government is as old as America itself. America was born out of mistrust of government. The revolution that was fought in the 1770s and 1780s was actually won in the minds of colonists in the mid-1760s when the British imposed the Stamp Act and used writs of assistance to enforce it. The Stamp Act required all persons in the colonies to have government-sold stamps on all documents in their possession, and writs of assistance permitted search warrants written by British troops in which they authorized themselves to enter private homes ostensibly to look for the stamps.

These two pieces of legislation were so unpopular here that Parliament actually rescinded the Stamp Act, and the king’s ministers reduced the use of soldier-written search warrants. But the searches for the stamps turned the tide of colonial opinion irreversibly against the king.

The same king also prosecuted his political adversaries in Great Britain and here for what he called “seditious libel”—basically, criticizing the government. Often that criticism spread and led to civil disobedience, so the British sought to punish it at its source. The prosecutions were so unpopular here, and so contrary to the spirit of what would become the Declaration of Independence, that when the British went home and the Framers wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was added, the First Amendment assured that the new government could not punish speech.

Yet barely 10 years into “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule,” in the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, Congress at the instigation of President John Adams criminalized free speech that was critical of the new government.

How did it come about that members of the same generation—in some cases the very same human beings—that declared in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” in fact enacted laws that did just that?

As morally wrong, as violative of the natural law, as unconstitutional as these laws were, they were not historical incongruities. Thomas Jefferson—who opposed and condemned the acts (he was Adams’ vice president at the time)—warned that it is the nature of government over time to increase and of liberty to decrease. And that’s why we should not trust government. In the same era, James Madison himself agreed when he wrote, “All men having power should be distrusted to a certain degree.”

The Alien and Sedition Acts were but the beginning of a long train of government abuses visited upon people in America as a consequence of the “experiment in self-rule.” I am not quoting Obama’s Ohio State speech to nitpick, but rather to establish a base line for my argument that he rejects core principles and historical lessons and, most troubling, the natural law itself when he opines that government should be trusted because it has gained power via self-rule.

Self-rule alone is hardly a basis for governmental legitimacy, unless it is accompanied by fidelity to the natural law and to the rule of law. The rule of law here means fidelity to the Constitution, that all laws are just and apply to everyone, so no one is excused from obeying the laws and no one is excluded from their protections. Yet, self-rule here has been unjust and has brought us the tyranny of the majority. And that tyranny has brought us slavery, unjust wars, Jim Crow laws, domestic concentration camps in wartime, slaughter of babies in the womb, domestic spying without search warrants, torture and death by drones—just to name a few.

The reason Obama likes government and the reason it is “a dangerous fire,” as George Washington warned, and the reason I have been warning against government tyranny in my public work is all the same: The government rejects the natural law because it is an obstacle to its control over us. The natural law is divinely embedded in our souls. It is manifested by the universal yearning for freedom and justice. It consists of areas of human behavior—thought, expression, religion, self-defense, travel, acquisition and use of property, privacy, for example—in which our behavior is subject only to the exercise of our free will and not the permission of our neighbors or regulation by the government. The natural law, properly understood, is a restraint on the government.

Yet, government in America—whether it consists of Congress protecting the slave trade, or John Adams or Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson prosecuting political speech, or FDR incarcerating Japanese-Americans, or George W. Bush promising immunity for torturers and domestic warrantless spies, or Obama killing whomever he chooses with drones—has never hesitated to reject the natural law. All of these violations of the natural law were approved by the majority when undertaken. The government’s persistent and systematic rejection of the natural law is alone sufficient to mistrust government and reject Obama’s Ohio State advice.

The government that has come about by self-rule derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Because the tyranny of the majority can be as dangerous to freedom as the tyranny of a madman, all use of governmental power should be challenged and questioned.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.

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Top Five Regrets of the Dying

By Bronnie Ware

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected: denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial, and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed, though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honor at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.

Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks, and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.

It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually, though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks: love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one.

Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.

They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called “comfort” of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

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The Silence

By Phil Lynch

I have been rubbing shoulders with death lately. My father-in-law passed away a month shy of his 99th birthday. My wife and I had been staying with him and my brother-in-law for the last five months. The main reason we were there is because we wanted to be around him before he passed on. Our job commitments had meant we weren’t previously living in close proximity, so we were grateful that the Lord had, through recent changes, created the opportunity for us to come back. He was a grand old man who wanted to live to 100, but his body just didn’t last the distance.

Then today my sister wrote that my cousin had also passed away. I wasn’t close to him—actually, I'd had no contact with him for about 40 years—but still, it was cause for me to reflect on the fact that someone that I had known well for a time was no longer around on earth. It is an odd and unfamiliar feeling. But that in itself is strange, because death is integral to life. Physical life has a beginning and an end. We rejoice at birth and grieve at death.

I am presently still in the moment. I know that death for us is a moment of release into the spirit world. I know that God has promised us that we can barely even imagine the good things that He has in store for those of us that love Him.1 I know we are supposed to take hold of those promises and let them encourage us.

From the Bible, we know a number of things about the afterlife from the time of the Rapture onwards. We know that then we receive a new super body, still corporeal in some aspects but super-corporeal in others. We will be able to eat, we can walk and talk, and our new bodies will be flesh and bone, but apparently not have blood.2 More than this, we will also be able to appear and disappear. We know this because Jesus did these things after His resurrection and John tells us that “we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him.”3We will be able to fly and survive in rarefied atmospheric conditions, because it says we are going to meet the Lord in the clouds when He comes at His second coming.4 Jesus, of course, rose into the clouds at His ascension.5

But what happens before that time to those who pass on isn’t talked about a lot in scriptures. There is (or at least there was) a place called Paradise that Jesus went to at His death on the cross.6 We also know that Jesus went to visit the spirits in prison,7 but that doesn’t necessarily mean Paradise and that “prison” are the same place. He could have visited both. Paul said he knew of a man—many think he was alluding to himself—who visited Paradise, which he also called the third heaven, in some event so profound that he wasn’t sure if he physically visited it or it was only a spiritual experience.8 Jesus told us of a certain poor man, Lazarus, who died and was carried to Abraham’s bosom.9 Some suggest that is the name of an actual heavenly place, but many versions of the Bible translate bosomas side, so my guess is that it meant Lazarus was next to Abraham.

Nevertheless, Jesus told us that when we believe in Him, we have eternal life. So if life is forever, then we must go from life to life at the moment of death. That means our spirits live on. Many who have had near-death experiences describe that life in glowing terms, but if we are going strictly by what the Bible says, there is not much to go on. But knowing the nature of our God and that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and gentleness are the essence of His Spirit, I think we can be sure that life after death in His presence will be a wonderful experience.10

But for now there is a silence in my soul. I was going to describe it as an emptiness, but that is not the right word, at least not for me. My thoughts are far from empty. I am thinking of what these people had been and done on earth and of my interactions with them. I remember the one time I played golf with my cousin. I even remember the box-thorn bush I hit my ball into and his commiseration as to the scratched and bloody arm I got from retrieving it. It's funny what memories stick with you. There were probably lots more that could have but didn't.

But I don’t hear him. I don’t hear my father-in-law either. The silence isn’t a bad thing. It is not a scary thing. Still, a couple of voices have been lost to the world, distinctive voices that probably don’t have a match anywhere. Life is different now. The world, or at least my world, is not the same.

I know this is probably a transitory phase I am going through. And I am confident I will come out of it and it will be a life-affirming experience. But I don’t want it to pass without me capturing the essence of it, without it adding some depth to my character. It is not a morbid or fearful grieving, but these days have an ineffableness to them. I have wandered into a part of life that I haven’t been into for quite a while. And this time it is different than before. Perhaps I am more philosophical this time, or more conscious of mortality, or more human and less doctrinaire in my theology, or… But it feels like this time is life-enriching, because it goes right to the core of my being. I have come up to the wall at the end of earth life. I have placed my hand on its surface. It is a strange feeling.


[1] 1 Corinthians 2:9.

[2] Luke 24:39.

[3] 1 John 3:2.

[4] 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

[5] Acts 1:9–11.

[6] Luke 23:43.

[7] 1 Peter 3:19.

[8] 2 Corinthians 12:2–4.

[9] Luke 16:20–22.

[10] Galatians 5:22–23.

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His Higher Ways

By Steve Hearts

As with every aspect of our walk with the Lord, prayer is, and always will be, an endless learning experience. If there is anything that a life of prayer has taught me, it is that God’s ways are truly higher than ours. We often approach Him in prayer, thinking we have a pretty good idea of what we want or need. Many times this is true and we receive the exact answer we’re requesting. But what about the times when we request something and in response we are given the exact opposite? When this happened to me, I was left with a gnawing uneasiness for some time, which caused my prayer life to take a nosedive. But Jesus, in His faithfulness, cleared it all up like no one else could.

It all started when I was 13. Our family was living in the U.S. with several fellow laborers in the faith. One of them, a dear woman who I will call M., was diagnosed with an advanced case of cancer. Her chances of survival were slim. My family and I, along with many others, held daily desperate prayer vigil for her healing. She miraculously pulled through and is still living today.

When my mother was diagnosed with the same type of cancer several years later and not given any better chance of survival, M. was a constant source of encouragement for her. She regularly assured us all that it was but a small thing for the Lord to bring Mom through, were this His plan. I took great courage and hope in M.’s words.

One day while we were gathered in prayer for Mom’s healing, the Lord brought to M.’s remembrance a verse she had hung on to during her illness, which was marvelously fulfilled. It was a statement Jesus made in John 11:4, upon hearing the news that Lazarus was sick: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”

This promise caused my hopes to soar even higher. I held fast to it, even when Mom developed a blood clot on Thanksgiving Day and was only given 24 hours to live. When she stabilized some and was put in hospice care, I continued to hope. I clung to this hope until the very last minute, when she finally passed away a couple of months later.

During the aftermath of our bereavement, I managed to remain fairly composed outwardly. But inwardly I was confused and at a loss for explanations as to the way things had turned out. Hadn’t we been specifically told that Mom’s “sickness was not unto death?” What of all the prayers for her healing? Had they gone to waste?

Several weeks passed before I could muster up the courage to bring my questions before the Lord and seek His answers. I finally decided to at least give it a try and began to pour out my heart to Jesus. Then I waited silently. I had not been waiting long before His presence began to flood the room, and I felt His words speak to my heart.

He said that Mom had been presented with the tough choice between remaining with us and going to be with the Lord. She had been told that the latter would turn out most beneficial for all in the long run, even though it seemed like the most difficult choice at the moment. Having submitted to God’s highest will, she was now with Him. Meanwhile, I was assured that not a single prayer that was prayed on her behalf had gone unheard by Jesus.

I came to understand how wonderful the Lord is in allowing us the freedom to make decisions, and operating according to what we decide, just as with the city of Nineveh in the story of Jonah. When Jonah was commanded to warn Nineveh of its imminent destruction, he did so, failing to take into account the possibility that the people of Nineveh could choose to repent and turn from their wicked ways. When they did, causing God to change His mind and spare them, Jonah was displeased. But that day he came to see a side of God that, it seems, he had not previously known. I was also reminded of God’s words in Isaiah 55:8–9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Although I knew beyond doubt that the answers I’d received were true, it took a great deal of surrender on my part to believe and accept them. In all honesty, this process took a total of eight years. But when I finally accepted all that had happened and learned to give thanks to Jesus for it, the grave lost its victory and death lost its sting. Furthermore, Jesus gave me the gift of healing, renewing my faith to pray for the sick and trust Him for the answers. He still continues to use this gift for His glory.

The new attitude that I was given, of thankfulness and acceptance of God’s higher ways, is clearly expressed in a song I recently heard for the first time. It is by Steven Curtis Chapman and its title is “Higher Ways.”

Your higher ways teach me to trust You.
Your higher ways are not like mine.
Your higher ways are the ways of the Father
Hiding His children in His love.

Someday I will fly and
Maybe then You will take me aside
And show me the bigger picture.
But until I'm with You
I'll be here with a heart that is true
And a soul that's resting on
Your higher ways.

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