What’s the backstory of the book that is like no other?
Have you ever thought about what God’s direction for you might be for this stage of your life? You might be like many people I’ve known over the years who have been honestly asking the question: “what is God’s will for my life?”
Now, before I share with you a significant milestone in my own life to see how God providentially guided me to do something that has given me a roadmap for my own journey for the last 50 years, I’ve learned that we need to take a look at a basic starting point to answer this perennial question. You’ve probably asked it more than once yourself. What does God want me to do? The real question that I have found myself asking many times is “what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God for me?”
I realize that whole books have been written about that question. I’ve found that the Bible has a few very basic parts to discovering what God’s personal will is for me.
Now, this is pretty profound. So, don’t skip over this part too fast.
Starting with Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the most basic element of following Christ for a believer is one of the most memorable discoveries of my life after my mom gave me my very first real, leather-bound Bible. It was my birthday gift when I turned 16 almost 64 years ago. That was the stage of my life when I was really preoccupied with what kind of career I wanted to pursue and how to prepare for that regarding choices for college. The passage that really got my attention starts in Matthew 6:19:
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt. 6:19-21).
Verse 25 really began to make a dent in my rather childish and self-centered mind. Jesus said, essentially, “don’t worry about your life… look at the birds… and how your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt. 6:25-26).
But it really got more intensely personal for me as I started thinking seriously about the next few verses. Verse 25 starts out with “Don’t worry about your life” (Matt 6:25).
Then He says: “Look at the birds of the sky… Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt. 6:26). And then He really doubles down on the idea of “not worrying” about things like clothing and even eating. And He then tells me that “your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.”
That idea began to be very personally real to me in ways I really hadn’t thought much about before then. But what really struck me deeply was the next verse. It was probably one of the very first verses I actually underlined in my new Bible with a colored pencil.
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matt. 6:33).
I’m supposing that “all these things” intends to mean things like food and clothing and essentials for staying alive.
I may not have understood much about the deeper meanings of that verse, but one thing began to really dawn on me like the brightest sunrise that I would ever see with my physical eyes. God cared about me so much that He made very clear that the most important and central thought of my life had to be the intentional focus on pleasing my Creator.
Whatever there was in my thoughts, concerns, plans or worries of my life, I seriously began then to realize that God’s kingdom principles had to be first and foremost in my thinking.
Now, I wish I could tell you that I never veered off God’s track as I ambitiously pursued my dream of a career in the outdoors. Smokey the Bear was the iconic image in my mind as I followed my college career path. And that was simply a life of enjoying everything I loved about nature – the mountains, the trees, the adventure, the beauty… really just about everything that gave me such a ‘sense of wonder’ about being involved in God’s amazing, wonderful creation.
As I took seriously the hard work ethic instilled in me by my parents, I made plenty of stupid mistakes along the way. And that was largely because I hadn’t yet learned the lesson of discerning the difference between the natural carnal mind and the spiritually attentive mind. (Now the mind set on the flesh is death; but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace’ Ro 8:6). I’m just very thankful that I never got into any really serious trouble or dark behaviors that could have permanently messed up my entire life. That was the same year in my life – at age 16 –when I was re-baptized, having been baptized as a young child at an age before I can remember the occasion. And it was also the time when I really began to consciously and personally put a high priority on living a life that was trying to please God. And the Lord has always been faithful to steer me back on track when I started to drift off the ‘narrow path.’
Years later, my spiritually-minded eyes came across the next part of my discovery of God’s will for my life. It was in the Apostle Paul’s longest letter… the book of Romans. Check out the opening statement of chapter 12. It’s what you could call my second great eye-opening epiphany about discerning what God’s specific will would be for my life. You might be familiar with it. It says:
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Or, as the Amplified Bible and many other translations indicate, giving your body to God as a living sacrifice “is your rational (logical, intelligent) act of worship.” (Ro. 12:1).
Does that mean that your whole life is actually able to be, and even intended to be your highest form of ‘worship?’
And then it concludes the thought by saying, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove (or ‘test and approve’) what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Ro 12:2).
Here also, is a place where the Amplified Bible really helped me grasp what this is talking about. It says:
“And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed [From the Greek word meaning “metamorphosis,” referring to the process that leads to an outward, permanent change.] and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].”
Wow! That was for me an amazingly life-renovating insight. And it continues to expand with more and more implications the longer I live.
And then there’s one more basic piece of the puzzle that God’s Holy Spirit opened my eyes to understand about finding His ‘will for my life.’ It’s one of many highly important verses that I found was written 3,000 years ago by King Solomon in the amazing book of Ecclesiastes. It says:
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might…” (Eccl. 9:10).
It’s reflected in the New Testament book of Colossians. It says:
“Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.” (Colossians 3:17)
The basic lesson I learned from this was when I heard it applied to the life of Moses when God met him at the burning bush. Remember that? It was when Moses had been tending sheep for his father-in-law in Arabia (the land called Midian) for 40 years. He simply said to Moses…
“What is that in your hand?” (Ex. 4:2).
After Moses answered God, saying that it’s “A rod…” Then God began to give Moses a series of instructions of what to do with what was in his hand.
So, the way the Lord impressed on my mind at least one application of this Bible event was that God begins to direct me when I start using the things that He has providentially put in my life for purposes that will bring honor to Him. And that honor doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with things that are particularly spiritual or religious in any way. It often is something that leads to productivity, or edification of others, or fruitfulness, or beneficial to the good of others in some way.
So, when the Lord directed my steps to return, for the second year, back to the Bible College in Canada where I had been providentially guided to attend the year before, it wasn’t even another year before He gave me an assignment that directly changed the course of my life forever. I was asked by one of my dearest Bible teachers and pastors to help him create a year-long Bible college course that would guide students to know the many keys to understand how the Bible and science relate to each other. Now, this made sense because I had a bachelors degree in science and I had a masters degree in history and museum administration.
So, eventually, after four years of teaching that course, that I was directed to create for the Bible school, the major parts of the course became the content of my seminars that have been taught in many churches and schools all over the United States and other countries for many years. From very early on, the Lord guided me to call the seminars “Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation.” Cassette tapes and VHS video tapes were made of the 12 lessons that were typically taught over the course of six evening seminar sessions. That was before the Internet, when people actually enjoyed coming out six nights in a row to see a very informative and entertaining multi-media, 2-hour long presentation on the innovative ‘big screen’ that was a new thing back then.
About ten years after I began putting all the information and colorful illustrations together to present to thousands of people in live seminars, the Lord eventually made it possible to publish the first book, titled Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation, Volume One. That was 1986. After 25 editions going out to a couple of hundred thousand people over the next 16 years, the Lord miraculously enabled our little ministry to expand and upgrade the book to a beautiful full color edition in 2002.
It’s been an exciting adventure of faith and providential miracles for over 40 years. Now, the Lord has used a number of people to encourage me to create a 36-week home-school curriculum, using the content of this pivotal book to help establish a rock-solid confidence in the absolute truth and integrity of the Bible for the next generation.
One of the really important topics in my book that is carefully broken into simple and clearly understandable questions and observations about God’s creation is the question of “When did it all begin?”
For me, and I think for most people in the general public… even among Bible-believing Christians… we’ve all been indoctrinated that the universe is billions of years old. We’re supposed to believe that the mountains and valleys of our Earth are even as much as hundreds of millions of years old. We get completely lost in the ability to defend the truth of the Bible. Why? Well, it doesn’t take long for any Bible reader to figure out the Biblical age of Earth from the genealogical records of the patriarchs in Genesis chapters 5 and 10. You can’t squeeze out more than about 7,000 years from the six days of creation to the present time. But everybody knows that according to the supposed facts of modern science, the Earth has to be over 4 billion years old and the sun, moon, and stars are even billions of years older, right? But where do we get that? We get it from 200 years of the nearly complete domination of main stream science by the completely false and unsubstantiated beliefs of humanistic evolutionism.
Everything in academic science has been dominated by a largely anti-God, and anti-Bible worldview. And it’s all paid for by the highly secularized government-sponsored school book publishers and scientific agencies that are supported by wealthy influential atheists with little to no regard for God and the Bible. They don’t believe in the Genesis record of the six days of creation and they typically are unwilling to even look at the evidence in its favor.
They refuse to acknowledge the reality of the global Flood of Noah’s time, even though more than 300 ancient oral traditions from cultures around the world reflect the truth of Noah’s Flood. What’s even worse is that they completely disregard the geological evidence that can even be logically interpreted in no other way. Things like petrified trees, surrounded by supposedly millions of years of sedimentary deposits are ignored. All the billions of fossilized delicate plants and billions of mineralized creatures from clams to insects and from birds to dinosaurs are vivid evidences only of catastrophic burial and only thousands of years ago. But the secularized science world has built their ‘religion’ of evolutionism and they sneer at any ‘simpleton’ Bible-believer as unworthy of any serious discussion or debate. Experience has proven for decades that evidence-based public debate is futile for proponents of evolution. That’s why they try to pretend that the Creation scientists who do the serious research are unworthy of interaction and seldom ever engaged in academic debate.
But the facts of observable scientific evidences on earth show that the evolutionist assumptions of proclamations about things like fossils and rocks being millions and hundreds of millions of years old are simply impossible. Here are just a few verifiable discoveries that most of your family members going to school in the last few generations likely never heard about from their secular schools and academic institutions.
Over eighty “clocks” (called geochronometers) indicate the non-evolutionistic age of creation. These clocks are actually processes that keep ticking away through the centuries. All of them are based on the obvious reality that natural processes, occurring steadily through time, produce cumulative and often measurable results. These studies reveal maximum upper limits for the length of time these processes could have continued. Almost all of them point to a rather young earth. Only the least accurate and highly speculative few are misleadingly used to prop up billions of years. Those few are vigorously publicized to persuade the uninformed public that there is no reasonable alternative to evolutionistic gradualism. See a clear detailed lesson on Young Earth/Young Universe by astronomer Spike Psarris at https://www.awesomeworks.com/7-keys-video-link-a3-2-young-universe/.
Have you ever heard of Juvenile Water? A dozen or so volcanic eruptions each year produce about one cubic mile of juvenile water that’s never been on Earth’s surface before. Evolutionists assume that the present is the key to the past. So, this process would produce all the ocean water of the world (340,000,000 cubic miles of it) in just 340 million years. And there’s no way for it to force itself back deep under Earth’s mantle again. But, that means there were no oceans at all on the earth 340 million years ago! But, according to typical evolutionistic charts of earth’s history, 340 million years ago was the peak of the “age of fishes”! Do you see a problem here?
Think of the Sediment on the Sea Floors. At the current rate of erosion – if evolution’s millions of years are real – there should be thirty times more sediment in the ocean than there actually is. Of course, to believe that you have to assume that the ocean has been there for at least a billion years.
You’ve probably known about Oil Deposit Pressure deep in the crust of Earth. If oil deposits had been encased in earth’s porous sedimentary rocks for more than 5,000 years, in many cases there would be no oil pressure left. In reality, oil deposits release huge amounts of pressure when they are tapped! Beside the possibility of abiogenic petroleum, the only other sensible explanation is that at least some of earth’s oil-forming hydrocarbons were deposited suddenly and catastrophically encased in Flood-deposited layers just a few thousand years ago. And that’s just the way you see it.
Consider the Erosion of Mountains. At the present gradual rate of erosion all earth’s continents would be worn down to sea level in just fourteen million years. We can see vivid evidence for catastrophic erosion at the closing phase of the Flood, but there’s no evidence such drastic slow erosion happened even once. In the Rocky Mountains, billions of well-preserved animals are fossilized in the rock layers and claimed to be one hundred million years old. They are thousands of feet above sea level. How many times did these high mountains have to wear down to sea level in the last one hundred million years? How did those fossils manage to stay undisturbed all that time while the mountains supposedly eroded down to sea level six or seven times? It makes no sense at all.
River Deltas show dramatic evidence. Why? At the present rates of erosion and sedimentation the entire Mississippi River delta would accumulate in about 5,000 years! What was there before that? Well, the river couldn’t have been there, could it? How could this be? Unless of course the North American continent, and all the other continents for that matter, just haven’t been in their present positions any longer than that. About 5,000 years… Are you kidding?
Many think Carbon-14 measurements support evolution’s millions of years, but the facts actually support a biblical age for the earth! Did you know that C-14 is unstable with a short 5,700-year half-life? All of it eventually degrades to Nitrogen in far less than 250,000 years. To the surprise of evolutionists, modern science has been unable to find any natural source of carbon below so-called Pleistocene (recent-Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon-14. Did you hear that? This is observed even where the strata are dated by evolutionists to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon-14 labs have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s. They have tried to hide it, and are unable to explain it. Lately the world’s best such laboratory has learned during two decades of low-carbon-14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally. Under contract to creationists, they confirmed the presence of C-14 in coal samples, and in dinosaur fossils, and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in the ground with recent carbon. This is very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.
Did you know what are the oldest living things on earth? They are not the giant redwood trees in California. The gnarly Bristlecone pine trees survive in one of the most hostile climates on earth, in the high desert mountains between California and Nevada. These rare trees have almost 5,000 growth rings! The Bristlecone trees are so hardy it is fair to say that they will likely go on living for thousands of years, unless some catastrophe destroys them.
It’s a fact. We don’t find a grove of trees somewhere in the world with 8,000 tree rings, or ten or fifteen thousand annual rings. It implies that these trees may have begun growing on a devastated earth less than 5,000 years ago, following the worldwide Flood!
Did you know that Supernova remnants are too rare? That’s right! Supernovas have been observed about every 30 years when stars violently explode, leaving remnants behind called a nebula. If the universe is extremely old the total of observable nebulae should have tallied in the thousands by now. Only 205 have been detected. This number is 65 less than expected by astronomers, even assuming the universe is only 7,000 years old.
And here’s a shocker! Star formation is not observed! That’s right. There are now an estimated 70 sextillion stars in the universe that formed in less than 20 billion years. That’s 3.5 trillion stars per year or 6.5 million every minute of every year. Yet, nobody has ever observed even one star forming from material that was not a star. Think about that.
Do you find this kind of information helpful? Do you want to hear and see more on YouTube? If you’d like to unlock more mysteries of creation, see part one of my seminar, showing important evidences to address the question – “When Did It All Begin?” You’ll find it at the link in the notes for today’s podcast at Reclaim Your Legacy dot com.. Otherwise, you can use your Internet browser to go directly to YouTube and then use the search bar on the YouTube website to enter the search term: “Dennis Petersen When Did It All Begin.”
Here is the direct link to the full seminar: https://youtu.be/tUmw-VmnQMo
If you want to see more videos of my seminars online, you can find 9 seminar sessions there in the series about Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation. These recordings were produced for believers to use in teaching their children many of the basics of Bible-based Creation Science. And if you’re interested in helping me create a full semester-long middle school and high school curriculum using the content of my book, you can connect with me on my website at www.Awesomeworks.com . If you visit www.ReclaimYourLegacy.com to see today’s podcast, you can also write to me at the bottom of the transcript displayed there. I can’t promise to respond to your note immediately, but if you’re patient, I’ll try to get in touch with you as soon as I’m able.
Bonus Segment
The following content completes the list of 20 scientific facts, showing that the Earth and universe cannot be millions and billions of years old, included in my book, “7 Keys to Discover Genesis is True.”
Comets disintegrate too fast, All short-period comets (with less than a two-hundred-year orbit) would be gone in as little as 10,000 years! The current counts of known comets in our solar system are between a thousand and five thousand. It seems that comets are “wearing out” pretty fast. Because many astronomers aren’t willing to admit this process might indicate that comets, as well as the solar system itself, originated only a few thousand years ago, they’re forced to dodge the issue by devising another theory. So, they suppose there must be a huge “nest of comets” far out in the solar system. Every now and then some cosmic disturbance supposedly kicks some new comets out of the nest. Has anyone ever seen this nest? (they call it the Oort cloud). No one has ever seen a cosmic comet nest. This is pure speculative fantasy.
Cosmic Dust on land and sea, Millions of tons of cosmic dust fall to the surface of planet earth each year. This dust floating around in the space between the planets is high in nickel content and may have originated from the explosion of a planet between Mars and Jupiter that created the asteroid belt. We don’t find much of this dust on our continents because it keeps washing into the sea. But the amount of nickel dissolved in the sea is about what the rivers would erode off the continents in only 18,000 years at the present rate. There is no sign that a saturation of minerals like nickel in the seawater caused them to precipitate on the sea floor. So, the evidence would make us suspect that the process must not have been going on for millions of years. What do evolutionists do? We’re told the ocean floors are slowly “subducting” under the continents. So the dust that is supposed to have been precipitating out of the seawater for millions of years has been “swept under the carpet” so to speak. If that is true, then of course there is no way to ever find the missing cosmic dust.
Cosmic Dust on the Moon, Since evolutionists believed that fine powdery cosmic dust has supposedly been gathering on the moon for nearly five billion years, the space agency was concerned and built the first lunar landing module with wide saucers at the base of each leg. Some NASA scientists estimated a one-hundred-foot thick layer of dry cosmic powder covered the moon. Conservative calculations expected a layer 54 feet thick. Fearing the astronauts might sink in a poof of deep powder, NASA did everything possible to make a very gentle landing. That’s why the lander had huge saucer “pods.” They even built sensing rods extending about three feet straight down under those saucer-like landing pads to measure the subsurface temperature of the lunar dust. But what did astronauts actually find when they got there? About one eighth to three inches of dust was all that was there! They were surprised. Putting up the flag on solid rock was a job of drilling. How long would it take to gather that much dust? About 8,000 years MAX!
Human Population growth, The present human population would develop from a single family in just 4,000 years if the growth rate were reduced to only ½ percent per year – an average of only 2½ children per family per generation. That is a fourth the present rate of growth. It would easily allow for long periods of no growth due to famines, wars, epidemics, and natural disasters.
When evolutionists insist that humans have been populating the earth for a million years, do they have any idea how many people would be on earth after one million years? Even if the population growth rate were reduced to a fourth the present average, or a scanty ½ per cent a year, you’d have a number 10 with 2,100 zeros after it! They’d never fit… even in the entire observably known universe!
Writing in every ancient culture appears between 4 and 5 thousand years ago. That was the same time as Noah’s Flood. See how this supports the Genesis record of Earth being created just thousands of years ago at: https://www.awesomeworks.com/7-keys-video-link-a3-4-ancient-writing/
Earth’s magnetic field, Every 1,400 years the Earth’s magnetic field strength decreases by half. Careful measurements worldwide reveal the strength of the field must have been much greater in the past. That would be fine back to 6,000 years ago, but if you project back 10,000 years ago, we run into serious difficulties. The earth’s magnetic field would then have been equal to that of a magnetic star. Earth’s surface would be molten. According to Dr. Thomas Barnes, we can only conclude that life on earth would not have been possible more than 10,000 years ago. The weakening magnet of our planet will eventually cause the disappearance of the magnetosphere and the accompanying Van Allen Radiation Belts. These are invisible but vitally necessary to support life. There are no such structures around the planet Venus, because Venus has no magnetic field.
The Moon is receding, Tidal friction and other things are making the earth’s rotation speed slow down a very tiny amount each year. That causes the moon’s distance from earth to constantly increase! Accurate measurements show the moon is drifting two inches farther from the earth each year. The rate would have been higher in the past. That may not sound like much, but if you believe the evolutionist view, in five billion years the moon would have receded 380,000 miles. It would have prevented normal tide fluctuations necessary for the cycles of living things on earth. See astronomer Spike Psarris’ talk at https://www.awesomeworks.com/7-keys-video-link-a3-5-solar-system/. Begin at the 43:10 mark.
Biological matter decays too fast, Natural radioactivity, mutations, and daily decay cause DNA and other biological materials to rapidly degrade. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years. Recent study of genetic entropy in the human genome due to multiple slightly harmful mutations added each generation reflects an origin several thousand years ago. DNA experts also insist that dead physical DNA molecules cannot survive in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, BUT intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils believed to be much older. Among these are Neanderthal bones, insects in amber, and even dinosaur fossils. Bacteria believed to be 250 million years old seem to have been revived with no DNA damage. Soft tissue and blood cells found in many dinosaur fossils have astonished experts. See evidence of dinosaurs at https://www.awesomeworks.com/7-keys-video-link-a3-6-dinosaurs/.
Helium in the upper atmosphere, The amount of helium-4 in the upper atmosphere would accumulate in only 175,000 years at its present rate of release from Earth’s crustal rock formations. There is no evidence it is flying off into outer space. It is feasible to think that the Creator would have included some helium in the atmosphere from the start, but there is no explanation for why there is no evidence for billions of years’ worth of helium.
Radiometric Dating, A candid evolutionist admitted:“It is obvious that radiometric techniques(like potassium-argon and uranium-lead)may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different(sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ‘clock.’ The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists.” One geologist was honest enough to admit the short-comings of the whole system by writing, “No coherent picture of the history of the earth could be built on the basis of radioactive datings.” See why radiometric dates can’t be trusted https://www.awesomeworks.com/7-keys-video-link-a3-7-radiometric/.
Scripture disallows deep time. Moses, Jesus, and the apostle Paul specifically pointed out facts that make it impossible to force extensive evolutionistic time (i.e., “millions of years”) into the Holy Scriptures. The most significant commentary confirming that the days of creation were normal days that occurred just six thousand years ago is found in Exodus 20:11. Jesus reinforced the recentness of creation by his comment on the creation of male and female in Mark 10:6. Paul affirmed the origin of death through one man in Romans 5:12. See a short video about the six days of creation at https://www.awesomeworks.com/7-keys-video-link-a3-1-six-days/.
I’ve learned that when you take the time to study the background history of highly slanted science interpretations, concluding with evolutionistic millions and billions of years, that you inevitably find serious flaws in their assumptions and characteristic blind spots in their conclusions. They typically fail to even mention the flaws, weaknesses, and contradictions in their arguments. They will scoff at the miraculous power of God to create and sustain life on earth, with all its delicate ‘balance of nature.’ But they routinely assume the miracles of chance in evolutionism with no intelligence or believable ‘power’ to create the elements from nothing and turn non-living matter into complex living systems. There is no such thing as a “simple single celled life form.” And evolution has no clue how to explain the origin of all the billions of miraculous interdependencies between things like pollinating bees and pollen-producing plants. The miraculous natural migration instincts and curious reproduction patterns of untold millions of creatures have no naturalistic explanation. You have to have more faith in the mindless raw elements of God’s creation to do miracles by themselves than any rational person ever thought about having faith in an All-Powerful Intelligent Creator.