The Apostle Paul

Kyle Butt, M.Div.

Bible StoriesMen of the Bibl

Imagine if the world’s leading atheist, who had written books against God, Jesus, and the Bible for many years, suddenly had a change of heart and became a Christian. Such an event would be big news. Atheists would most likely write articles talking about what a huge mistake the person had made, while Christians would talk about how excited they were that this person came to know and understand the truth. Christians would point to this person’s conversion as an example of how the Gospel has the power to change the hearts of those who, in the past, were enemies of God. 

When we look in the Bible, we see an example of one of the most remarkable conversions in all of human history. In about A.D. 40 there was a Jew named Saul. Saul was a member of a sect known as the Pharisees. This special group prided themselves on knowing God’s Law in the Old Testament. In fact, it is reported that they valued the Old Law so much that in order to be a Pharisee, a person had to memorize, word-for-word, the first five books of the Old Testament—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Not only was Saul a Pharisee, but he became one of the most well-known Jewish leaders of his time (Galatians 1:14). 

When Saul heard about Jesus, he was angry. Jesus claimed to be the Messiah and the Son of God. Saul did not believe Jesus was God’s Son. Saul believed Jesus was a liar who was convincing people not to follow the Old Law anymore. On one occasion, a Christian named Stephen preached a powerful Gospel sermon about how Jesus is God’s Son and how the Jewish nation rejected Him. The Jews in the audience were so angry that they dragged Stephen out of their city and killed him by throwing stones at him (Acts 7:54-60). Not only was Saul with the crowd of wicked men who stoned Stephen, he was glad they stoned him and stood watch over their coats while they killed him (Acts 7:58). 

 Saul became one of the most vicious enemies and persecutors of Christians. He threw many Christians into prison. When they were put on trial, he voted that they should be killed. He would “compel them to blaspheme,” which most likely means that he tortured them or caused them emotional or physical pain to make them say they did not believe that Jesus is God’s Son. Saul said, “I myself thought I must do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 26:9). The whole church knew that Saul was a wicked and cruel enemy of Jesus. 

In his zeal to harm Christians, he obtained letters from the chief priests in Jerusalem to persecute and imprison Christians in other cities. He planned to travel to Damascus, capture Christians in that area, and carry them back to Jerusalem to be tried, and most likely put to death. While he was on the road to Damascus, however, something amazing happened to him. Jesus appeared to Saul and asked him why he was persecuting Jesus. At first, Saul did not know it was Jesus and he said to Him, “Who are you, Lord?” Jesus responded, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:1-6). Saul immediately knew he had made a terrible mistake. He knew Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and he asked Jesus what He wanted Saul to do. Jesus told him to go into the city of Damascus and someone would tell him what to do. 

Jesus then appeared in a vision to a man named Ananias. He instructed Ananias to go and tell Saul what he needed to do in order to get right with God. Ananias did not understand. He knew that Saul was a cruel persecutor of Christians. Why did Jesus want him to visit Saul? Jesus explained that He had plans for Saul (Acts 9:10-19). So, for three days, Saul was blind from seeing Jesus on the road. He waited for someone to come and tell him what he needed to do. Finally, Ananias came to Saul and said to him, “Why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). Saul obeyed Ananias. He received his sight, and he began preaching that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.

You can imagine how people reacted to Saul’s conversion. After he began to preach about Jesus, the Jewish leaders who formerly worked with him were furious. The more they listened to him preach about Jesus, the angrier they became. On several occasions, they tried to kill him (Acts 9:23). On the other hand, the Christians were not sure about his conversion. They were still afraid of him and thought his conversion was fake, and he was just trying to infiltrate their churches and do them harm. Thankfully, a Christian named Barnabas, whose name means “Son of Encouragement,” trusted Saul. Barnabas took Saul to the Apostles, and they realized that his conversion was real and that he was a Christian just like they were. 

Not long after his conversion, Saul began to be known by his other name—Paul. You may know him as the Apostle Paul. God used Paul to accomplish wonderful things. 

First, God sent Him into many foreign countries to preach and teach that Jesus is the Son of God. Thousands of people responded to the Gospel message and became Christians. He established many churches throughout the world. Second, the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write 12 books of the Bible, which is almost half of the books of the New Testament. Many of the “books” are letters that he wrote to the churches where he had traveled and preached. 

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Paul’s story is an example of how powerful the Gospel of Jesus Christ is. Paul once wrote that he was “the chief of all sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15). He persecuted Christians and had many of them killed. Yet the power of Jesus’ blood was able to forgive Paul, just like it is able to forgive all those who believe in and obey Jesus.
By the end of Paul’s life, he had suffered greatly because of his preaching about Jesus. The Jews had whipped him five times, with 39 lashes each time (for a total of 195 lashes), he had been beaten with rods three times, he had been stoned, shipwrecked, and thrown in prison on a number of occasions (2 Corinthians 11:22-33). 

Yet, in spite of the pain Paul endured, he stated that all the suffering we experience here on Earth is light (or insignificant) compared to the glory we will receive in heaven (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). Near the end of Paul’s life, he explained to the church at Philippi that he had a desire “to depart and to be with Christ.” Because of his faithful service to Jesus, he was excited to leave this earthly life and be with Christ forever. Like Paul, we should all determine to live a faithful life of service for Jesus so that one day we will get to stand with Paul and hear our Lord say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant…. Enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matthew 25:23). 

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What the Tower of Babel Proves About Language

 

Nobody knows exactly how many languages there are in world, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing between a language and a sub-language (or dialects within it).  One authoritative source that has collected data from all over the world, The Ethnologue, listed the total number of languages as 6809.

The Bible’s explanation of the origin of multiple human languages is provided in the Tower of Babel incident recorded in Genesis 11:1–9. Scripture simply and confidently asserts: ‘Now the whole earth had one language and one speech’ (11:1).  When Noah and his family stepped off the ark, they spoke a single language that was passed on to their offspring.  As the population increased, it apparently remained localized in a single geographical region.  

Consequently, little or no linguistic variation ensued.  But when a generation defiantly rejected God’s instructions to scatter over the planet, God miraculously intervened and initiated the major language groupings of the human race.  This action forced the population to proceed with God’s original intention to inhabit the Earth (cf. Isaiah 45:18) by clustering according to shared languages. Duursma correctly noted: ‘The Babel account suggests that several languages came into existence on that day. It is presented as a miraculous intervention by God’.

This depiction of the origin of languages coincides with the present status of these languages.  The available linguistic evidence does not support the model postulated by evolutionary sources for the origin of languages.  Many evolutionary linguists believe that all human languages have descended from a single, primitive language, which itself evolved from the grunts and noises of the lower animals.

The single most influential ‘hopeful monster’ theory of the evolution of human language was proposed by the famous linguist from MIT, Noam Chomsky, and has since been echoed by numerous linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists.  Chomsky argued that the innate ability of children to acquire the grammar necessary for a language can be explained only if one assumes that all grammars are variations of a single, generic ‘universal grammar’, and that all human brains come ‘with a built-in language organ that contains this language blueprint’.

Explaining this ‘innate ability’, a ‘universal grammar’, and the ‘built-in language organ’ of humans has proven to be, well, impossible!  Steven Pinker, the eminent psychologist also of MIT, candidly lamented this very fact in his best-selling book, How the Mind Works.  In addressing the failure of ‘our species’ ’ scientists to solve these types of plaguing, perennial problems, he wrote:

‘The species’ best minds have flung themselves at the puzzles for millennia but have made no progress in solving them.  Another is that they have a different character from even the most challenging problems of science.  Problems such as how a child learns language or how a fertilized egg becomes an organism are horrendous in practice and may never be solved completely’ [emphasis added].

​However, the existing state of human language nevertheless suggests that the variety of dialects and sub-languages has developed from a relatively few (perhaps even less than twenty) languages.  These original ‘proto-languages’—from which all others allegedly have developed—were distinct within themselves, with no previous ancestral language.  Creationist Carl Wieland rightly remarked: ‘The evidence is wonderfully consistent with the notion that a small number of languages, separately created at Babel, has diversified into the huge variety of languages we have today’.

 

Do Children Inherit the Sin of Their Parents?

Kyle Butt, M.Div.

Alleged DiscrepanciesDoctrinal MattersCalvinism

Understanding the nature of God’s interaction with man is no small task. The sincere Bible student often comes across things in the biblical text that are puzzling. Others, who are perhaps somewhat less sincere, twist these initially puzzling passages “to their own destruction” (as described in 2 Peter 3:16). One such idea that has been abused is the alleged contradiction between how Jehovah dealt (and still deals) with the children of sinful people. Steve Wells, author of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, insists that there is a discrepancy in the Bible regarding this subject. He lists Exodus 20:5, which states: “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.” Wells then presents Ezekiel 18:20 as a contradictory verse: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself ” (Wells, 2003).

Is there a legitimate contradiction between these verses? Or, to pose the question differently, “Is there any possible way that both these statements can be true?” The fact of the matter is that both statements can be true, without a contradiction occurring. What Mr. Wells and others who twist these verses into an alleged contradiction do not recognize is that there is a difference between bearing the guilt of a parent, and suffering negative physical and emotional consequences due to that parent’s bad decisions.

It often is the case that the children of wicked people suffer terribly. Sometimes these children suffer because the parent physically or emotionally abuses them (in direct violation of Scripture; cf. Matthew 7:12; Colossians 3:21). At other times, the child suffers as a result of the parent’s irresponsible behavior. For instance, suppose a man addicted to gambling wastes his salary on gambling, instead of using it to feed his family. As a result, his children suffer hunger, shame, and poverty.

Yet, even though the children of sinful people often suffer physical consequences, they do not inherit the sin of those parents. The book of Jeremiah provides an interesting commentary on this subject. In Jeremiah 16:1-6, God told Jeremiah that the prophet should not take a wife and/or have children in the land of Israel. God explained His reasoning to Jeremiah as follows: “For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place…. ‘They shall die gruesome deaths; they shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried, but they shall be as refuse on the face of the earth’ ” (16:3-4). Why was this going to happen? Wells is quick to refer to this chapter, especially verses 10 and 11 where the children of Israel pose the question, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us” (vs. 10)? Wells then records Jeremiah’s answer: “ ‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ says the Lord” (vs. 11). Wells, however, does not cite the very next verse (12), which states: “And you have done worse than your fathers….”

These Israelites were suffering due to the sins of their fathers—and due to their own sins. Their children were going to die gruesome deaths. The skeptic is quick to seize upon this fact, and demand that any time innocent children die, it is a travesty against justice that a loving God never would permit (a fallacious idea that I have refuted elsewhere; see Butt, 2004).

Do children sometimes die horrible deaths due to their parents’ wrong decisions? Absolutely. The Israelites had adopted the practice of sacrificing their own children to a false god named Baal (Jeremiah 19:5). The iniquity of the parents, then, can be visited upon the children in the form of physical suffering. But do those children bear the guilt of that sin? Absolutely not! Ezekiel wrote by inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son” (Ezekiel 18:20, emp. added).

Notice the words soul and guilt. Does the Bible ever insinuate, for example, that a child is guilty of idolatry because his parents were idolatrous? No (read Matthew 18:3-5; Luke 18:16-17). Bearing the guilt of sin is altogether different than bearing the physical consequences of the actions of others. As is often the case, the skeptic has confused the two, and has alleged a biblical contradiction where, in fact, none exists. This is yet another example in which the allegation against the Bible fails, but “the Word of the Lord endures forever” (1 Peter 1:25).

REFERENCES

Butt, Kyle (2004), “The Skeptic’s Faulty Assumption,” [On-line], URL: https://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2230.

Wells, Steve (2001), Skeptic’s Annotated Bible [On-line], URL: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/1cor/index.html.

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Different Views of Death

Wayne Jackson, MA

Doctrinal MattersDeathEnd TimesSalvation

None of us enjoys contemplating the prospect of losing a loved one to death. It is a horrible experience. Yet, if the deceased is a child of God, the pain is lessened considerably. This is why the apostle Paul could say, in his letter to the saints at Thessalonica, that we “sorrow not, even as the rest [non-Christians], who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). When a dear one in Christ leaves this life, we sorrow—not for the one who has gone to be with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8), but for our own temporal loss. And it is temporal, because eventually there will be happy reunions (Genesis 25:8; Matthew 8:11).

I recently read of a case that illustrates the bleakness faced by the unbeliever when he is forced to face the prospect of death’s separations.

Marie Curie was undoubtedly the most prominent woman scientist of all time. She was twice awarded the Nobel Prize. She was married to Pierre Curie, a prominent scientist in his own right. On April 19, 1906, Pierre was run over by a galloping team of horses pulling a heavy wagon. His head was crushed by one of the wheels and he died instantly.

In a biography about her mother, Eve Curie describes how Marie was devastated by the accident. She clung to Pierre’s corpse as he was dressed for the funeral. She kissed him repeatedly. From that day, Eve says, she became “a pitiful and incurably lonely woman” (p. 247). For a long time she wrote notes to him each day in her diary. Here is one of those notations: “Your coffin was closed and I could see you no more…. We saw you go down into the deep, big hole…. They filled the grave and put sheaves of flowers on it, everything is over. Pierre is sleeping his last sleep beneath the earth; it is the end of everything, everything, everything” (p. 249).

Obviously Madame Curie had utterly no hope of ever seeing her beloved husband again. Years before, Marie had abandoned whatever faith she had. Eve writes that her mother “gave her [daughters] no sort of pious education. She felt herself incapable of teaching them dogmas in which she no longer believed: above all she feared for them the distress she had known when she lost her faith” (p. 268).

How very sad. Death is not the end of everything. Rather, it is the beginning. It is the beginning of eternity. May we so bind our families together in service to God that when our parting comes, it will be a “sweet sorrow.”

REFERENCES

Curie, Eve (1937), Madame Curie: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday).

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By the Numbers

Trevor Major, MSC, MA

Creation vs. EvolutionDeity of ChristInspiration of the BibleAge of the EarthProphecyScientific Foreknowledge

In the feature article, I raised the issue of time, only to say that it does not need to be a problem. Whether differences built up between populations gradually, or rapidly at the beginning, or in occasional brief spurts of intense change, seems to be an empirical matter. The pattern of change should not be assumed ahead of time.

However, we do have to work within certain constraints. If James Ussher’s dates are anything to go by, the Flood occurred in 2348 B.C., and the dispersion from the Tower of Babel occurred in 2234 B.C. Even conservative writers do not agree on the exact dating (e.g., Morris, 1974, pp. 247-250) but, for the sake of argument, let us say that human variation began around the time of Ussher’s date for the Flood. This sets a time limit of approximately 4,350 years.

Next, we need to know the extent of variation. The commonly cited figure is 0.2%. In other words, if you were to compare your DNA with the DNA of a stranger picked randomly from anywhere in the world, you would find that two base pairs (the “rungs” of the twisted, ladder-like DNA molecule) in every thousand base pairs are different, on average. There are around 3 billion base pairs in human DNA, so 0.2% of this figure would equal 6 million base pairs.

Actually, the situation is a little worse than this. If ancient art is anything to go by, skin coloration was a significant feature at an early stage (again, for the sake of argument, I will not worry about the discrepancies between archaeological and biblical chronologies). We could assume that obvious physical variations were fairly well established by the time of Abraham (c. 2000 B.C.). Is there enough time to accumulate these changes in the first few hundred years after the Flood?

The situation is helped a little by the estimate that only 6% of the 0.2% variation represents differences across major groupings (Gutin, 1994, p. 72). Between, say, a European and an Asian chosen at random, we would expect to find a difference of only 360,000 base pairs. Of course, all we need are sufficient mutations in the genes that are most responsible for making us appear different to people in other places. In the case of skin color (see feature article), this could mean a few mutations among a handful of genes.

So far, this is just a sketch of where we need to go in terms of a biblical model. No one, including the evolutionist, has explained all the empirical data. Still, 6 million mutations in such a short time requires some explanation.

One solution may lie in much higher mutation rates. Most estimates have rested on molecular clocks which, in turn, have rested on evolutionary assumptions. Until recently, we have not had good empirical measures of the mutation rates in humans. The situation improved when geneticists were able to analyze DNA from individuals with well-established family trees going back several generations. One study found that mutation rates in mitochondrial DNA are 18 times higher than previous estimates (Parsons, et al., 1997). If this new rate were applied to the “mitochondrial Eve” research, it would turn out that this hypothetical woman lived 6,000 years ago. “No one thinks that’s the case,” science writer Ann Gibbons is quick to point out (1998, 279:29). Still, if these new estimates hold, evolutionary anthropologists will have to do some fancy footwork around their dates for key events in the development of modern humans. Most important, the new data may put a biblical empirical model in closer reach.

REFERENCES

Gibbons, Ann (1998), “Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock,” Science, 279:28-29, January 2.

Gutin, Joann C. (1994), “End of the Rainbow,” Discover, 15[2]:70-75, November.

Morris, Henry M. (1974), Scientific Creationism (San Diego, CA: Creation-Life Publishers).

Parsons, Thomas J., et al. (1997), “A High Observed Substitution Rate in the Human Mitochondrial DNA Control Region,” Nature Genetics, 15:363

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