Third Watch Ministries, NFP Bob & Ellen Bollow
P.O. Box 1283 September 27, 2019
Wheaton, IL 60187-1283
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.” Job 38:4
Hey Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I hope you have been enjoying late summer of 2019. It’s now officially fall, but it has been the fall semester for just about a month at campus. God has blessed the work of evangelism and 46 students have prayed with me to receive Jesus this school year so far, with several others committing to Christ but not praying with me in the moments I had with them. So we want to thank you for your prayers and gifts, without which this would simply not have happened. Not that God cannot draw people to Himself by visions and dreams or even in solitary confinement reading the Bible. All these ways I have read of happening in my lifetime. But He graciously uses you and me, and that is a kindness to us.
I thought you might be interested to hear my best recollection of a discussion I recently had on campus with a black guy Reese, who claimed to be a Muslim. He was in a religious studies class that had begun to talk about atheism and so I began to explain to him that science is a description, not an explanation. The analogy I used went something like this. “Say I ask you how your girlfriend broke up with you, and you tell me, ‘She wrote a note that said, I do not want to date you anymore. Then walked over to my house and rang the doorbell. I opened the door to let her in and she stepped inside, kissed me on the cheek and said I’m breaking up with you. She then handed me the note and walked out of my house and my life forever.'” “This,” I said, “though it is a complete explanation of how your girlfriend broke up with you, tells me not one thing about why she broke up with you. You may in fact, for the rest of your life, never discover why she had broken up with you. But you have a complete explanation of how she did it.” He agreed and laughed and seemed to have a girl in mind who had never provided an explanation for their break-up.
Science does this all the time. Many of its descriptions are woefully inadequate, but they get away with them because they seem complicated or they use a scientific world we have grown to accept. Sometimes they just label a force, but not only can they not tell you why the force exists, but they cannot tell you why the force acts upon the world in the manner they describe. Newton came up with the math that describes Gravity, but Newton could not tell us what Gravity was. It is simply the name of a force he discovered existed and had mathematical equations to describe. He believed the reason why Gravity existed was the Old Testament’s creator God. (He did not believe Jesus was God.)
Here is another scientific explanation with no math, just a story-line description: Evolutionary science. Evolution describes that within every life form, cells conspire to survive. They want to survive and so try to become more fit. This is not exactly true, though they say it. For example, a fern has cells that survive, but it is not the fern itself that wishes to survive exactly, from an evolutionary view point. In truth, the fern will not survive because nothing survives. Every life form on the planet dies. But the fern has a desire that it reproduce itself over time, and what it reproduces will survive to reproduce. So in effect, we are told to believe by the scientists that tell us this tale that the fern (and all life forms) are made of small pieces (cells), all the parts of which want their children and grandchildren ferns to have a better shot at survival. This is, of course, silly on several levels if you pause to think about it. First, because we do not really believe ferns have these motivations for their grandchildren or are capable of this foresight. And second, because we do not believe all the intricate parts of any given life form down to a cellular level can mutually conspire. This is to humanize or anthropomorphize the tiny pieces of every life form and give each of them a will to collectively do things. Not for the organism they are a part of but for a future organism of which they are unaware. BUT let’s take a leap with them and say “OK, all these little bits of us and everything else are driven and conspiring for their future grandchildren to have a better shot at survival.” What force drives them, every little piece of everything, giving them this will? Well this force is blind chance, they say. In horse racing they call this luck. But no one really believes Luck is a thing. We do not believe there is a force out there called Luck, or Chance, that rests on things such that they gain an advantage we then deem desirable. When you say someone is lucky, or a horse is lucky, you mean that there is a force you do not understand and do not define, that landed on them and something you think is desirable happens. So IF an evolutionist says Chance is a force doing things in the world, they are saying there is a force they cannot name, which is acting on all life forms. And one of the things this force they call Chance is doing is driving life forms to make their genes survive long enough (to be fit long enough) to adapt in a way that makes their grandchildren ferns exist and then create another, better fern. So they do not name it and cannot find it. They can only describe it. Even if they were right about their weak description, it is not answering why the fern wishes to do that. (It is not telling you why your girlfriend broke up with you). So the option is left to you, if you wish to name the force something more satisfying or descriptive than Chance. I do not believe that on their own, all the little bits of a fern are conspiring in the manner an evolutionist says. But since they do not say what force wired them that way, made them all want to conspire to survive, I can name the force for them. I can call the force God. So evolution’s believers are not disallowing for a belief in God. They believe a force has made everything want to have its offspring survive. So they cannot insist the force is not God.
A former Oxford professor points out that if you come over to his house and want some tea, he will put the kettle on to boil on the gas burner. A scientist can tell you that the heat from the gas has made the molecules in the kettle speed up, and that is why it is boiling. But the professor says there is an explanation beyond this description of heat for why the water is boiling in the kettle. It is boiling because you wanted a cup of tea. If the fern did evolve from past ancestors who wanted it to be more fit (and I do not believe it did), that is a description. It lacks the explanation of who wanted it to do that and nothing in the description prohibits the explanation of God. God, in fact, is the only thing that would make the description an explanation. Science is a description, not an explanation. Evolution is arguably neither, it is just a tale scientists tell.
We find many students have an unexamined belief in evolution. They have been taught evolution is a fundamental truth, but that life, at its inception, was Chance. Please pray for these students, that they will come to an understanding that God is their Creator, and the Creator of all things. (We regularly have this discussion in our Tuesday bible study.)
These are the students that have prayed to receive Jesus this year so far:
(An * means they did not pray with me, but said they would pray later.)
Roy, Jamari, CJ, Jaylen, Jordan* Carmen, Ray, Chloe* Marco, Jeff, Daniel* Cole, Chase, Gillam, Isabelle, McPaul, Bryan* Chris, Tyler* Pablo* Bobbi, Enzo, Andrew, Kiya, Michael* Cody, Esabel, Saul, Joe, Kimberly* Ivan, Ethan, Zandrix, Jasmine, Sandra, Monsieur, Jamie, Tionne, Mia, Maria, Rachel, Luciana, Briaunna, Oedrey, Mahala, Goldie*, David, Clinton, Tavian, Reese, Austin, Kevin, Danny, Mya and McKenzie
Please also pray that the Lord will move in the hearts of some of these students to come to bible study. Right now we have only our faithful few that are returning students from last year.
In Him,
Bob & Ellen