All right, well, after five weeks looking at chapter three of the Westminster Confession of Faith, we're now going to look at chapter four, which is entitled Of Creation. So just a very quick review before we dive right in. Chapter one was of the Holy Scripture. Chapter two was of God and the Holy Trinity. And then chapter three was of God's eternal decree. So these first three chapters of the confession really lay out the basis for who God is, how we know about him, how he's revealed himself, and then what his general will for the world is. That's kind of the first three chapters. And then in the remaining chapters, a couple dozen chapters, we get much more into the nuts and bolts of how his decretive will or his decrees, what he's decreed to come to pass, are executed. How it happens in time. And then how his prescriptive will, his commands, what he said, I command that you do this, this is my will for your life, how that is to be obeyed. So the rest of the chapters, for the most part, are how his decrees pan out in time and how we are to obey him as he reveals himself in the Holy Scripture. So the logical place to begin speaking about how God's eternal decrees are worked out in time is by speaking about the creation of the heavens and the earth. So that's what we're on now, chapter four of creation. I'm gonna read paragraph one for us today. It's just a two paragraph chapter, so it's a little shorter, and we're just gonna go through the first half of it tonight. Chapter four, paragraph one. It pleased God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness in the beginning to create or make out of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days and all very good. We'll go through that a couple more times as we're going through, but I'll read it again one more time for you right now, just so you have it in your head. I know their sentences are very long and they're very full. So sometimes we can get lost in the middle of it. So I'm gonna read it one more time. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness in the beginning to create or make of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days and all very good. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. When we're reading the Bible or sometimes theology books, it's often very easy for us to rush past important details. But when God inspired the scriptures, he did not waste a single word. There's no unnecessary fluff added, no elegance that lacks content. So every word of the Bible comes directly from the mouth of God and every word matters. And I just want us to remember that, especially as we approach this doctrine of creation, because the Westminster divines, we might think, wow, they're really making these long sentences, but every single clause has a purpose. Sometimes they'll even have in one sentence, multiple footnotes throughout the sentence, just to show you where they're establishing each phrase from scripture. And so I don't want us to rush past these first few words in this paragraph. We're going to dive right in. Paragraph one opens by declaring the truth that it pleased God to create the world. It pleased God to make the heavens and the earth. He didn't make the heavens and the earth because he was lonely, but it did please him. Think about the first chapter of Genesis describes God reflecting on the work of his creation. What phrase do we see over and over again in Genesis 1, where God reflects on his creation after he made it? If you know it, you can say it out loud. That's right. And it was good. And God saw it and it was good. God saw what he had made and behold, it was good. We see that over and over again. God makes something. Well, first he decrees it of God's eternal decree. He has a plan in his mind. Everything God does is according to his eternal counsel of his perfect will. Then he does that plan and then he reflects on what he did. And as he's reflecting on creation, he says, this is good. I see what I've made and behold, it is good. And then at the end, it is very good. God was taking pleasure. in his creation. It was, of course, an objective goodness. He's looking at it objectively and saying, this is good, but he was also taking delight and pleasure in what he made, just not a cold calculating checkbox of good creation. And even though his entire creation shortly would be subjected to a curse because of our sinfulness in Adam, God continues even to this day to take pleasure in what he has made. He delights in the work of his hands. There are things about this world. I don't know if you've thought about this before. It's something I think about frequently. There are things about this world that only God knows about. No matter how long the heavens and the earth persist before Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, whether that's a hundred more years or 10,000 more years or even longer, there will almost certainly, I think, be things about God's creation that are known only to God. And in our self-centered humanistic minds, we are sometimes tempted to think, well, what purpose could something created that's never discovered by man serve? What purpose could that serve? I get asked questions like these sometimes when I'm doing outreach about, you know, what if this crime happens and no one ever sees it? Will there ever be justice done? Or what if there's just all types of absurd questions, but God sees everything and God delights in the goodness of his creation. The answer is what purpose can these things that we don't know serve is that even the secret things about the heavens and the earth exist for God's pleasure and for the display of his glory. One of the Psalms we sing here at church puts this doctrine on display very clearly. Psalm 104, God makes the grass grow. It's a favorite of our kids because it talks about sea monsters. In verse six, we sing this, forever Jehovah, your glory is lasting. Rejoice in your works and look down on the earth. That's a fairly literal translation. Rejoice in your works and look down on the earth. And this is not just, the psalmist is not just giving a vague hope. I really hope God rejoices in what he's made. No, this is a prayer of praise, thanking God that you, in fact, Lord, you do rejoice in the work of your hands. And that's something that we should praise you all the more for. You continue to rejoice in this world you made. God tells us about this in great detail in the whirlwind speeches in Job. Job about 38 through 41, we read some of the most wonderful descriptions of God's power and his works in the world. We learn about heavenly storehouses full of snow, treasuries of hail stockpiled for the day of battle. We hear about God's ability to string together constellations, to tame the most powerful animals on earth. Many of the things God describes here, no one has ever even seen. God says this, who has divided a channel for the overflowing water or a path for the thunderbolt to cause it to rain on a land where there is no one, a wilderness in which there is no man. No one's even in some of these places on the earth and God says, I'm still sending rain. I'm still sending rain. I'm still growing plants. There might not even be animals here. Why am I doing this? It's for my glory and for my pleasure. God has created things that we don't know about and that no one will ever see just to delight himself in them and to declare his glory to himself. He can declare his glory just to himself. Sometimes we think, well, God's declaring his glory for us to see. Well, he does, but he also declares his glory for himself and for his angels. His angels are concerned about his glory and about proper worship of God and to the animals. Think about that. God declares his glory to animals. We're not his only creatures. We're the only ones made with rational souls and made in the image of God, but we're not the only ones he has made. All of God's creation is first and foremost for the pleasure and glory of God himself. And so I don't think the confession accidentally put in there that the first words, it was for God's pleasure, according to his pleasure. Another detail we might be tempted to rush past here in chapter four, paragraph one, is who the divine say accomplished this great work of creation. They do not merely assert that God is the creator, but that God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, as they say, took pleasure in the creation of the world. The creation of the heavens and the earth, like all of the works of God, was a Trinitarian work. It was not only God the Father who created the world. And then we have thousands of years until Jesus shows up. Sometimes we can kind of slip into that thinking, but the Trinity, God is a Trinity, and God as the Trinity was involved in the work of creation. The confession cites a number of proof texts here to establish this point. I want us to look at just a few of them together. First, we have Hebrews 1, 2. God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. How was it that God made the worlds? It was by His Son. And then looking back into the Old Testament, with the understanding that we now have, since God sent His Son and gave us the revelation of Jesus Christ and gave us the New Testament, we can see even more how Christ was pointed to, even in the words of the Old Testament. Psalm 33 verse six tells us this, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. That sounds to me like it's pointing exactly to Jesus Christ. By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. Jesus is the one who's gone forth. He's the one who's been sent by God to effect his creative power. The apostle John tells us essentially this exact same thing in the opening of his gospel that we've been going through on Sunday mornings. John 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Jesus was involved in every aspect of creation. All things were made by Him, and just in case you're confused, there was nothing that was made that wasn't made by Him. All by the Word of the Lord. And then of course we have Genesis chapter one again. In the beginning, God made the heaven and the earth and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. So each person of the Trinity was clearly involved in the work of creation. Now, before we move on, I wanna just read our paragraph we're working through one more time here to keep us calibrated. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness in the beginning to create or make of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days and all very good. So God has created the world for the manifestation of His glory, of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, specifically, the divines point out here. And we've already touched on a good bit of that. I think that's all shown in the whirlwind speeches and elsewhere, but I wanna reflect specifically on how we can see these three attributes that the confession cites for us, three attributes of God on display in His creation. And I'd love if anyone has examples, some participation here. Can someone give us an example of how we can see, today, we can see God's power, wisdom, or goodness on display in his creation? Those three aspects are highlighted. Absolutely. That's right. That's right. And used to, even in the news and papers and things, we would call them acts of God. Because it was so evident that only God could do something like that. That that's something a human couldn't do. Well, it could be. Yeah. Maybe if you have something in mind. Sorry. Yeah. Power, wisdom, goodness, anything that you see in creation. Just as deep as you want to go in the intricacies of a flower or a leaf or... Absolutely. Absolutely. So we can see, you know, God's, both his power and ability to create that, but also wisdom and the intricacy and the intentionality that went there, the knowledge that he must have to create something like that. I mean, he has all possible knowledge that could ever be, and that's how he creates these things. The counsel of his will is perfect. And so I think intricate care is an important one. Any other examples anyone wants to highlight? I think we see his wisdom in the marriage relationship. Yes. How it's designed and how it works. We see his wisdom in a lot of design, I guess. Yeah, I think design is really key for wisdom. Marriage is a good one. It teaches us about who God is and how he relates to us. And then just how he made us to go together, how he made us to just to fit together so perfectly in a marriage relationship. Another one that I thought of that... I just put down here in some notes is how God has made food just all over the place. I mean, he's made food to pop up out of the ground. He's made it to fall from trees. He's made food that runs around, you know, until we catch it. He's made food that swims in the water. He's made food that makes other food for us, like chickens giving us eggs or cows giving us milk. All the intricate wisdom and goodness and power that goes into things like that is amazing. Think of the wisdom that it takes to make an eye. or to make a bumblebee fly. You know, I've heard, I don't know how true this is, but I've heard like scientists and physicists and engineers say bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly according to what we understand about mechanics. Like it just, they don't know how this giant round thing can fly so well, but they do, they fly. God is wise. He's wiser than all the wisdom of the world. And His goodness, I think, relates to all that. He's been very good. Relating to food, I was just reflecting this afternoon thinking, yes, God was wise and powerful to make all these ways of getting food, but he was good too. He gave us a desire and he gave us the answer to that desire. He's not going to leave us hungry. And he made the food taste good. God didn't have to invent taste. He could have made everything bland or he could have made things taste bad, but he made food taste so good. There are some foods that just taste so good. You want to keep eating them and eating them and eating them. And then he made other things. I thought about goodness. He made things in the world, think of this, God created the world good. He did not create the world with any sin. And yet he still planned and designed that certain things in this world would heal us when we get sick or injured. Like he put into certain plants, medicinal qualities, antibiotic qualities, pain relieving power within certain things because he knew we were going to sin and therefore we were gonna incur the curse, which results in sickness and death. And he said, I'm gonna just, preload into all of these wonderful things that I made healing qualities. So just so many wonderful things that God made that testified to his power, wisdom, and goodness that anyone can see. You don't have to have a Bible. You don't have to have a relationship with the Lord. You can just see and realize who could make a mountain. Clearly only God could do something like that. So he's just wonderful and powerful. Sadly, I think today, perhaps this aspect of seeing God in creation is a little bit harder for us than it was for our fathers. We live more disconnected from the land and from animals than our ancestors did. They knew about the power of the ox because the ox is the one that plowed their fields. They didn't have tractors. They didn't go to the grocery store to get their meat. They knew about this more than I think maybe we do today. I'm confident they had a more real knowledge of God's power in creation than we do. today yes yeah for like 80 years without stopping a single time that's right yeah That's right. You put a slightly wrong weighted oil into your car engine and it doesn't work. You put anything into us and we just keep going for years and years and years. It's amazing. God just made a system that works so perfectly together, even with the curse of sin. We still, I mean, it still just works really, really well. And that is something that we could just praise God about. Praise God. God created a good world, a good world that declares his goodness, his wisdom, and his power. And then this first paragraph closes by emphasizing that, in the beginning, God created or made of nothing the world and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days and all very good. A lot of the things we just talked about when we were talking about how we can see God's wonderful power, goodness, and wisdom in creation, we think automatically of the physical and the visible things that God has created. But he also made a whole spiritual world as well. God made these glorious creatures called angels. And they are among us. They're attending the public worship of God. They guard over us. They are ministering spirits. They are messengers from the Lord. We don't even see them. We don't even see these angels around us and they are around us. And just think of how wonderful that is. And whenever people do get glimpses of angels, it is overwhelming. People think they're going to die when they see an angel. Obviously, fear is a huge component, but I think it's just the awesomeness of this wonderful thing that God has made that He is, for the most part, hidden from our eyes. He made heavenly realities that we have not found out about, and we won't find out about until eternity. There could be just tons of things about the heavenly spiritual world that we don't know anything about. We get these glimpses though, like the celestial city. What does it mean to have streets of gold or shining clothes or gates made of pearl? I mean, it's just amazing. We can't hardly understand what that would be like. Think of the descriptions that we have of God's heavenly throne room or his throne, that he has a rainbow of emerald around him. And his throne is on a floor of like these wonderful jewels that we don't even know how to put into words because they shine and sparkle and show so many colors. are not just what we would think of as heavenly things, but think of other unseen things like radio waves. I mean, what? I don't even know what a radio wave is, if I'm being honest. No human being even knew radio waves existed for almost 6,000 years. But God created this electromagnetic field so that thousands of years after his work of creation was complete, people would be able to talk to their loved ones from opposite ends of the earth. I mean, that's amazing. He made these radio waves so that in the 21st century, the gospel could be preached here in North Carolina and then listened to in Australia or Oman or Madagascar or South Korea or Sweden. Those were all places that people have listened to our messages. I looked that up because I was thinking, how far has this gone? It's amazing that God has done this. I mean, the electromagnetic field was not an accidental aspect of creation. God designed that intentionally. We probably haven't even discovered all the ways we can harness that power. I'm sure we haven't, in fact. All according to God's wonderful plan, though. Further, the confession reminds us of the very plain biblical truth that God created the world out of nothing. This is one of the greatest miracles that could ever be. God himself has existed from eternity past. We know that, but nothing else has. There's been nothing else that has existed from eternity past. God did not have any raw materials with which to create the cosmos. When we create things, we might use that word create, but when we create things, we have to do it out of materials that already exist. If we wanna make a house, we have to get the wood and we have to get the cement and get the nails and get all these supplies. We can't just speak a house into existence. But God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. And this is something that no one else can do. This is the great problem that atheism and naturalism cannot answer. They cannot, atheists cannot even come close to anything that even looks like an answer for where the universe came from. Something that I've talked to people about a bunch and I'll run into an app when we're doing evangelism. It's, you know, we'll talk about, well, you don't believe in God, tell me why. Well, I believe in evolution, you know, something like that. Or I believe in the big bang. So I say, okay, well, where did our universe come from? Please enlighten me. Tell me where it came from. Because everything that begins to exist has to have a cause. And the universe, nearly every atheistic, naturalistic scientist or anyone will now admit it had a beginning. Almost every single person agrees the universe had a beginning. This is bad news for atheism. Because then the question is, well, how did it begin? Well, they'll say the Big Bang. The Big Bang caused it. All the matter of the whole universe was compressed into one single point and then exploded into the universe we know of today, more or less, after some cooling and some other things happened. Say, okay, well, you've told me how the universe expanded, how everything got spread out, but you've said absolutely nothing about how it came to be. How did all this matter come into existence to be compressed into that one little point? I don't know. Okay, well, how did it explode though? Apart from some outside force acting on it, how would this little singularity explode? because I don't understand how that could happen. And if there was an outside force, then that means there was something outside of all matter. Sounds like something like a God, right? I don't know. I don't know what they might say. And why is it that only universes explode into apparent existence? Sure would be great if money exploded into apparent existence, or why don't people explode into apparent existence, or microwaves, or iPhones? Why is it only entire universes? I don't know. Atheism is utterly unable to explain any of this. And this is one of the most basic articles of our faith. It's the thing that they can't figure out and they can't understand. And it's the absolute base level of Christianity that every toddler knows God created the world. It's how the Bible opens, Genesis 1. It's how the Apostles' Creed begins. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Basic, basic. Hebrews 11.3 is perhaps even more clear on this doctrine. Here we're taught that through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. The things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. And then finally, the divines tell us that God did this wonderful work of creation in the space of six days. There's no reason whatsoever for us to doubt that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal consecutive 24 hour days. There've been many theories which have been advanced over the years, over the millennia even, but especially over the past century and a half or so to explain, well, maybe this could have been, the universe could have been much older or God could have created things over a longer period of time. But all of these theories fall flat. Some people have said, well, the creation account in Genesis and in other places of the Bible, it's poetic. So it shouldn't be understood literally. And sure, there are poetic elements to how many parts of the Bible are written. But just because the first several chapters of Genesis do have some poetic elements as to how they were written, doesn't mean they're not true and historical. This is just very plain, clear communication. Genesis 1 is not one of the dark and hard passages of the Bible to interpret. There was evening and there was morning, one day. That's how you could read the Hebrew, literally. There's evening, there's morning, one day. And then interestingly, after that one day, then we have a numbering, which shows a consecutive. Then there's evening and morning, the second day. Evening and morning the third day. So the first one's a measurement. Evening and morning one day, not first day. Then evening and morning a second day, evening and morning a third day, and so on in sequence. It's very clear, these are just regular days. And if there was any doubt from reading Genesis 1, look at what God says when he gives the law to his people on Mount Sinai. The fourth commandment reads like this. He says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, Thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For, we could say, because in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Wherefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. So what's one of the reasons that God gives the people for their observing of a weekly Sabbath? Because that's precisely what God did. He worked for six days and rested on the seventh. He's, I mean, clearly God in the 10 commandments is talking about a literal week here. That's absolutely what he's talking about. He worked six days and rested on the seventh. And since the heavens and the earth were created in six literal 24 hour days, we can also conclude that the earth is relatively young. Archbishop James Usher calculated that the creation occurred in 4004 BC. He did an enormous amount of work just before the Westminster Confession was written in the 17th century to come up with that date. He combed through all the genealogies, however old everyone was, all the events that we knew had certain dates before Christ. And he came up with the year 4004 BC. Now I haven't done, 1% of the legwork that Usher did. But I don't know if we can be that certain about the year. And he was certain. I don't know that we can be that certain. I tend to think he was right, but here's the thing. It doesn't matter for our faith at all. It's no consequence to us or to the truth of God's word if it was 4,004 or 5,000. I mean, it's not a big deal. The key is the earth is thousands of years old, not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, not more than that. The people which posit an old earth, which I encountered a lot in seminary, you know, we forget the institutions always run more liberal. Almost all the institutions that are teaching pastors are going to teach tend toward a more old earth approach. The people which posit an old earth tend to allow the so-called scientific discoveries to influence their reading of scripture in ways which are just clearly foreign to the text and largely foreign to church history. Plus, along with an old earth, you have very troubling elements that pop up. Macro evolution, that one type of being could become over a a long period of time, another type of being in its descendants. Death before sin, that's the absolute biggest problem of theistic evolution. Because Romans 5 is absolutely clear that death came into the world through sin. But if we evolve from another species that God created millennia before us, or millions of years before us, well, why are they all not still there when Adam's there? They kept dying, of course. Well, how do you have death before sin? That's a big, big problem. A denial of the special creation of Adam and Eve. We just run into so many problems once you leave a young earth understanding of the creation, of the age of the universe. The problems are legion. So we just want to affirm what the Bible says, what the majority of the church history has said, and what our confession says here. God made the world in six days and all very good. There would be no death in a very good creation like that. So we'll end it right there for now. But what questions do you have? Or comments? I enjoy that. part of the chapter, is because it's very attainable to understand. Right. I mean, I think so, but apparently there are a bunch of people that don't grasp that. Christians, apparently, that you said, like in the universities, aren't grasping it. I mean, it is very clear in the Bible, I think. There are some things that are hard for us to understand, but this one, it's, I think it's very clear. it seems very straightforward if we just take the Word of God as it is written you can say that's what he's saying six days mm-hmm that's the real simple version of it but I think some of the academia put too much Stock and that will scientists say and they forget there those scientists are not coming from a presupposition of the beginning of knowledge is fear of the Lord. Absolutely. And they say, well, we have to comply with that, otherwise we... Even these Christians feel like they have to comply with what these scientists are saying. That's probably what's drawing them away as opposed to saying, no, they have this wrong starting point and I don't. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. And I mean, the church tradition is not... unanimous in thinking it's six 24-hour days, but it's a majority position. There were some people, Augustine for instance, thought that maybe the days represented figurative periods of time, like ages. And I think Origen had some weird views on creation. I think he might have even believed it was like an eternal generation of some sort. Don't quote me on that, but I know he had some strange, that you wouldn't get it from the Bible, influenced from philosophy or something like that. But yeah, and I'm not a scientist. I don't pretend to be, but I mean, we know that there is no contradiction between God's book of scripture and God's book of creation. So it's clearly just an interpretive problem that the scientists are having. And we know there are scientists who are Christians who believe in the traditional literal six 24 hour day account of creation. Probably the most well-known in the 20th century was I think his name was Henry Morris. He was the director of engineering at Virginia Tech. He was a flood, he was a hydrologist and he specialized in how water worked and moved and affected things. And so he did a lot of research and he said, you know, the reason we have this confusion with the fossil record and ground layering and stuff is because how catastrophic the flood was. And then, you know, he would point to other events like what we see when a volcano erupts, how it shoots everything in all these different ways that, you know, make it look like it's millions of years old if we use these other methods of calculation. But so I think the science will eventually one day unanimously bear out that the Earth is very young. Of course, we have Ken Ham. He does a lot of work in that field and very good stuff. They do a good job of speaking of the different possibilities of the Christian view, the age theory, what you mentioned about death before the fall. if that were true, and just speaking to the different theories people have, even from a Christian point of view, to get back to six literal days. Yeah, yeah. And there are, I mean, there's a lot of thought on it. I don't want to, I'm oversimplifying it right now. I think there's very good answers to that. Yes. Mr. Hanger, did you have a thought? I'm intrigued by verse number seven. It says, Separate the waters from above and below. It's not going to be filled up. It's a long journey of exploring. Mm-hmm There's a big drop of water in that sense. It's like it's just a stream of water. I'm still looking at it, but the need is immense. We live in a world that defies the law. I'm not trying to land you. I'm just standing in the middle of a big problem. Yeah, that's a good thought. I don't know exactly. I would love to hear more. So yeah, the question is about the waters above and the waters below and how perhaps the earth is like a big drop of water because water is perfectly spherical. Frankly, I don't know exactly what that means in the text. I've heard some people say that there's a positing that before the flood, the earth was surrounded by a circle of water. And then at the flood, when God opened the casements of heaven or opened the windows of heaven and poured down the deluge on the earth, that all that water came and covered the earth. Or it could be the cloud cover. Or it could be something before God separated everything out that is no longer presenting in the same way. I don't know. It's a good one for thought. It's one that we'll find out the answer one day, if not in this life and in the next. Or perhaps it's just one of those areas of theology that will get refined in a thousand years by the church. I don't know. It's very interesting. Any other thoughts or questions? I'll just say that it's been surprising to me to see how many serious Christian people believe in theistic evolution. We were at an OPC church in Atlanta, and our pastor was John Fesco, who's now a professor at Westminster. He was a professor at RTS. And I remember being so surprised that this young, recently graduated seminary student who is now the pastor of this NPC church, and one day out of the pulpit, he started talking about creation and how it came to be through theistic evolution, God guiding it. And my take, big picture, is that Culturally, Christians have been absorbing worldly presuppositions, ideas, beliefs. They really do think, they've been taught that man is a neutral investigator, that he doesn't suppress the truth to protect himself from God's law, that the mind doesn't justify what the heart has chosen. The mind is neutral and just goes and look at the facts. And so if that's what you think the scientists are doing, and again, that's what a lot of Christians are taught, then it kind of hooks them in to, they can't explain the difference between a six-day account in the Bible and what these honest scientists are saying, right? And so then they start, bending, warping, shaping, working on methods to try to make the Bible say something different than what it plainly says. And you've linked it to the fourth commandment. I mean, there's just, I don't see how you get around that. That's a huge bulwark for that doctrine. But I do think that people's belief about whether or not the scientists are neutral has something to do with it. And then they go back to scripture and bend the scripture based on that cultural belief. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. That's absolutely correct. There is a myth of objectivity and no bias. But yeah, it's definitely not the case at all. And anyone who spent time in academia, especially at higher levels, you know, if they're being honest, they'll tell you that that's completely untrue. That's just something they sell on the masses, you know, that the universities are unbiased. And another related aspect, which is maybe a little more insidious in a sense, is that evangelicals Since we kind of lost control of the universities and lost our cultural influence, there's a temptation to do whatever we think we need to do to get a seat at the table. And that's a big thing, and you can see it in the seminaries especially. If you want to publish, you need to make sure you're saying this and not saying that. if you want to get tenure. I mean, just wanting a seat at the secular table is a strong allure for many people. And it is bad, bad, bad. We shouldn't want a seat at their table. We need our own table. And we want them to change and come to our table, you know? So that's a problem too. Do you know what I mean by wanting a seat at the table? We want to have a voice in their arena. We want to be considered on their level and in the same guild as the PhD from Duke. We want the PhD from RTS to be given the same treatment. We don't want that. We don't want that, because we are different. And we don't need to be part of their academic associations. We don't need to be part of their accrediting bodies. We don't need that, because we don't need the worldly wisdom. All right.