Sugar Land Bible Church

Guest (Male): I can come on in and be seated. I think we're about ready to go. Can someone get the doors, please?

As you know, Pastor Andy is on sabbatical. So we've got a great lineup of guest speakers, and our first one today is here, and we're blessed to have Dr. Wayne House with us. He's going to do his first lesson this morning on interpretation of genres of history, myth, and parable in scripture and how to apply them from 1st and 2nd Timothy.

Dr. House is a professor at multiple universities and seminars. Currently, or he has been, he's currently with Faith International University and Seminary. He's a distinguished research professor there of theology, apologetics, and biblical archaeology. He has multiple degrees, including a Juris Doctor, a PhD in history and archaeology, and a ThM, or a ThD, I should say, in exegetical theology, focusing on the New Testament. He also leads tours in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, and Turkey, and he's currently involved in an excavation in Jordan.

He's the author of numerous books. He's been a pastor and a talk show host. And with him is his wife, Dr. Irina House, director of operations for Christian Perspectives. So let's welcome Dr. House.

Dr. Wayne House: Can I be heard? Okay, sometimes that doesn't happen. Well, I'm really happy to be here. My wife Irina is on the front here, and friends that we see. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and share with you some ideas that I thought might be interesting to you. When I go to various churches and speak, I don't necessarily do what I'm going to do today. But I thought this might be interesting to the people here, particularly since we're in Sunday school right now, I found out.

Before we know it, we just transfer right over to being in church service. So apparently I have two talks today. One is going to be more relating just a bit more give and take a little bit and going through issues that relate to things of understanding the scriptures in general, whereas the second talk will be on regular Sunday morning talk and we'll talk about an issue of Jesus and the Bible.

Part of what I am doing on that, I was told I should probably do this for you this morning. If you go to my website, which is hwhouse.com, that is a brand new one and it's still being worked on but it has most of the stuff. I have access there probably to at least 100 of the 150 articles I've written. I've done almost 45 books, and so those are not available there, but they are available to purchase.

But let me say about this. I have three different books I was told to mention. This is going to be something I may mention in the second service because this is the book I wrote that came out of being at Caesarea Philippi one day and meditating and praying and we had our group looking around and stuff. I got the idea of writing this book. This book gave rise to my sermon today, and I'll talk more about that, but that's The Jesus Who Never Lived. Let me give you the subtitle: Exposing False Christs and Finding the Real Jesus, which is what we're going to talk about some.

Another is a consortium book in which I called a number of very fine scholars to meet me in Israel. We met all together and did papers and talks and came up with this book called Israel: The Land and the People, which is a fascinating study. Lastly, something interesting and sort of fun. I don't know if you've read the proverbs much, but I did this little book called Living Wisely in a Foolish World, and this is on the book of Proverbs. So if you have some interest in those things, please feel free to move right ahead.

What I'm going to do now is talk about the question—and again, this is a Sunday school class, I'm not sure if we can have any interaction or not. I was looking more for a classroom. But I want to talk about how some people today who even claim to be evangelicals—and I'm not questioning their salvation, I'm not doing any of those things, I'm not questioning their intellect. I do question the way they've approached the text.

So I gave a presentation which I'm not going to read to you, but I read it at an academic meeting and called Interpretation of the Genres of History, Myth, and Parable in Scriptures and How to Apply Them. That was a presentation I did in Boston last year in an academic meeting. So what I'm going to do here is talk about a problem that we're beginning to encounter in the group that we call evangelicals.

Sometimes evangelical simply means we believe in the gospel. We're strong on the idea of salvation by grace through faith or whatever. But usually evangelical also includes the idea that people believe in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture; that is, that when it was written, it was inerrant. And usually agree that what we see in the biblical text is actually historical, that is, what it talks about actually happened.

We're not talking about figures of speech. I mean, or parables, those are something that actually happened—let's say Jesus gave a parable, that actually happened—but it's not talking about a real event, it's talking about how an event could occur and how to respond to it. That's what a parable is. It's not a historical event, but it's spoken by someone in history to talk about how to live your life.

So we're going to try to decide between those. Now, I've had some papers that have been made and printed off. I don't know how many are back here, but I had made these yesterday and I found out that I had left this one out on the general chronological consistency between the order of events in the Bible. What this is is a handout that you can have free that comes from my online study Bible that I've done that's never been done before.

It's called the House Visual Study Bible, modestly speaking. Years ago, I did a thing called the Nelson Study Bible. Anybody ever use that? I did that years ago, took me eight years on that with scholars. But this new one is different, and it's by subscription if you want to be involved in it. But it has some wonderful stuff in it. I took out several charts from it that might be helpful to you in what we're talking about today and also in the future. You can use this to help understand more about the Bible. So that's from the study Bible itself, but you have it in print now.

Let's move on then and talk about what's going on in the evangelical world in certain circles. What you find from some—and I'm not going to mention names per se of anybody here. I'm not talking about you, but people that are scholars. It's not my intent to pick out individuals, even that I know, that I disagree with and I think they've made some bad decisions on understanding scripture. But I will talk about the problems and the ideas instead, not the people.

What do you do when you have the people who are arguing—and some are now and who are well-known scholars in the circles in which I find myself—in the Evangelical Theological Society and groups like that. I used to be the president of that group, and we had a strong view of inerrancy. That is, you wrote an agreement every year to be a member. You wrote an agreement saying you believed in the inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures.

And that agreement that you signed was based on a council that occurred years before called the Chicago forum, which is the Chicago Statement of Faith in reference to what we believe to be the inspiration and Holy Scripture. The Chicago Statement says that you believe that the events you see in Genesis actually occurred in real-life history. That is, God actually did create things in seven periods.

Whether it's 7,000 years or seven days, which is what I would hope, it's not a problem if you believe it's longer per se. It doesn't say that. But you have seven periods of time in history that God actually brought these things about. But you also said not only the fact that you believe in that, but you also accept the remainder of historical occurrences that you see in the Bible rather than them being myth.

Some people have adopted the idea now that these things are mythical, not historical. And that's my big concern, because if that's true, we have some real problems. I had a young man approach me in a church service several months ago. I can't remember how long ago it was. I went up to meet him. I thought it'd be interesting to talk to him. He'd just finished a PhD at a major university.

And I thought I would say hello to him, and as I got close to him, he said, "Hello, Dr. House." And I thought, "How does he know me?" Well, I guess because I used to be the president of the group that he goes to and maybe he saw me up on the platform or something. But whatever it did, he said, "Hello, Dr. House. I just want you to know I'm a theistic evolutionist."

I said, "Really?" He said, "Yes, I and"—and he mentioned some people's names—"don't agree that the Genesis account is a historical event. That these are myths that were told." And I started talking to him about that, and I said, "But you realize the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy that you signed for the ETS requires you, as part of your signing, to say that you believe in the inerrancy of the scripture and that these events of like the flood, the creation, these are all historical events."

He said, "Well, we don't like that document." And I thought, "What's that got to do with anything about you signing the statement?" Which means you're lying at this point. And then we talked about that a little bit, and he mentioned people's names and we discussed it, and I walked away and I said this to him. I said, "If, in fact, I accepted your viewpoint, I would probably not be a Christian. I would probably not embrace the Bible as the Word of God, because what you've said undercuts that idea. And I'm actually holding a view that's not consistent with proper thinking and logic."

So that brought me to try to figure out how to deal with the problem. And so this thing I showed you a moment ago, of which I think you have a copy of now if you went to the back, I gave it at the meeting in Boston last year about the fact of how we deal with the idea of genre, like parables or things of that sort. How do we deal with the historical account? How do we decide what is history and what is myth?

And there's a lot of things that have to be talked about. I might tell you, by the way, I had one of these people that gave an—anybody seen the movie that's available on internet called the fact of Genesis and History? That was done several years ago. Del Tackett from the Northwest—or actually from Colorado Springs—he's the one that narrated that. It's a great thing if you haven't seen Genesis and History. You can get it free of charge right on the internet. It's a good presentation.

But I mentioned the fact that you have this idea of Genesis and History, and so this individual, he went and had printed for all the students at this university—major university that you would know the name—to look at that derided this movie, saying it's not historically accurate. And so he says these issues in the Bible are mythical.

And so I sent it to a friend of mine who is a C.S. Lewis scholar, and he's very well known for his research in literature and things like that of sort. He called me on the phone as soon as he got it and read it. And I won't tell you what he said, but what he said about this person—he says, "This person has no understanding whatsoever about what myth means in literature."

And so we find people that even are academically trained and professors who have marched into an area that they don't know about and are following people that they shouldn't be following. So I wanted you to have some understanding of these issues. I have talked about this in certain academic settings, and I won't go into that kind of area, but we'll work into this a bit. The rejection of early history of humanity in the book of Genesis by these people.

I want to tell you something C.S. Lewis said one time. Anybody familiar with C.S. Lewis? Great writer, right? Had a conversion that took a few years to come about, and it's a great story. C.S. Lewis said something interesting. He said that, in fact, he said, "History never comes out of myth. Myth always comes out of history." That is, a real event occurs and people over time in various cultures tell the story again and again and it begins to become part of their own folklore, becomes part of their view of the world.

But it doesn't reflect the true historical event that occurred that gave rise to the myth. But you'll never have a myth in scripture like saying what Moses says in Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3 and following. You'll never say that that actually is the way things were and people just made it up and eventually it became historical. That doesn't make any sense.

So you have to figure about how you work with these people. But you have these issues that people debate. Let me give you one here in this listing. I've got to learn how to use this new technology up here, by the way. I'm not used to this. I think I can do this and go there. Okay, and then I do this and go back. Okay, we're back, right?

Now we're going to look at one argument. We can't look at everything. If you want to look at everything, you can read more about the little things I brought in and so forth or read a book of mine or something. Anyway, creation of sun and moon on day one, though light is mentioned days one through three. That is actually not true. That's actually day four. I don't know why that got in there.

But whatever, the point of it is, a person said this is clearly mythical because you have light created and then several days later in the creation story there you have a reference to the sun and the moon. So it's clearly a myth that's being developed, because it's not historically true. And I thought, "That's interesting."

And I thought, "Now, what is light from a physics standpoint?" Light is not everything looking where you can see. Light is something much more behind the scenes that actually permeates the entire universe. And we use the word light for vision, but there's something besides that that actually is non-visible in that nature.

But having said that, Genesis 1 says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," which is a general statement. It's not saying how he did it. That's a general statement. When you look at my charts, you'll see what that means because I show you that you had first a general statement of God, then you had form and then you had fill.

God formed a context to happen, and then he filled into that context. He formed another context like the ocean, and then he filled it with fish. And then he did another one in animals on the land, and then he created animals and humans. He made places for people to be. He builds a house and lets people go into it. That's what it is, very simple.

And so that's what we see in Genesis 1, which is a true historical development. And so when you look at this idea of sun and moon, this person who's a well-known scholar, he says this is really a mythical account. But God is using this myth to teach us underneath it a theology that's inerrant.

And I thought, "Where does he get that idea?" 2 Timothy 3:16 says something very similar—I mean simple. It says all scripture, *graphé* is the Greek word, all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction. This person's arguing, "No, what happens is God gives us a myth that he fills theology into that we can actually have an inerrant truth." I'm saying you're not reading 2 Timothy 3:16 very well.

And so what we have, he says, this light obviously is a myth because you don't even have the sun and the moon. And I thought, "You don't understand the difference." Sun and moon are places that you have certain things come from, that is light of a visible sort that we talk about.

But if you go to the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, I read this one day and way after the time I wrote some of this stuff, I was just reading the Bible. I do that sometimes. And so when I was reading Revelation 21 and it said there's no more need for sun and moon because God is the light.

Isn't that an interesting statement? The beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible, bookends. God starts off a discussion that he finishes in Revelation. That's fascinating. Read the passages together. And I believe what is talked about in Revelation 21 is real. There's really God, there's really God is the light that we're talking about that generates the universe. It's a way of talking of God. And then you don't need any sun or moon any longer.

Folks, if you know the Lord, you're going to be there to see this with your own eyes. I can't say when, but whenever that all occurs for all of us who know the Lord, we're going to be able to maybe hopefully look back at Revelation 21 and say, "Yeah, I read about this." Isn't that great?

And so what we're finding here is that we have a person making a nonsensical statement because he doesn't understand the difference between the idea of what God is the light and the creator from whom comes things like sun and moon and animals and humans and so forth. This same person, for example, says it's obvious that you don't have what you might see in the first portion of Genesis about the creation of Adam and Eve because that's a mythical discussion.

Because God acts like God walks in the garden and actually forms Adam and Eve. And we know that God's not a physical form. And I'm saying, "You know what? I wish this person who's an Old Testament scholar, I wish this person could read more in the Old Testament. It would really help his theology."

Because we find places in the Old Testament in which God takes upon himself a human form. Now, Jesus truly became a human. True, one person in two natures. But in the earlier portions of Genesis, God comes to Abraham, named Abram at that point, and Sarah in a human form with two other human-formed people next to him, called angels, we find out later in the story.

And they come into Abraham's house, tent, and they get their feet washed and have a nice meal. Now, that doesn't sound like a spirit, does it? God took upon himself humanity. Do you think that God could take himself in a form that in the Garden of Eden where this person says it makes no sense God walking in the garden and doing that stuff, that he could do that also with forming Adam and Eve?

And when they became human, he communicated with them in a human form. Is that possible? I think so. I think we have examples of that. And as a matter of fact, when you look at the two angels that were with God talking to Abraham, you know where they go down to? They go down to where I've been doing excavations in a place called Tall el-Hammam, I think is the best place for the place that we think of as Sodom.

Okay, so that event really is occurring. So the point of it is God breathes into Adam. I don't think that it's just a metaphorical statement. He actually is working to create them because he wants to do it that way. Doesn't have to. God could say, "Poof!" For example, he does that with the fish. He doesn't go down and form each fish. You know what I'm saying? Or every bulldog or something.

He doesn't do that. He just says, "Let it be," and it is. But he wanted to form a certain relationship with humanity different from what he observed in the animal world, right? God didn't build a relationship with animals in the same way he did with humanity. And so I'm saying, what's the problem? Because God can do that if he wants to.

But he says, "Okay, it's obviously a myth. You've got this talking snake." Really, that makes it mythical. That's interesting. You ever read the book of Numbers when it talks about a guy by the name of Balaam? And he has a donkey there that God works through and talks to Balaam in a human voice with understanding the words. He communicates physically and human-like with Balaam the prophet.

I didn't know donkeys talked. I mean, Ed the talking mule, I remember that from—anybody ever watch that movie, TV program? I did. And that's really fun, but that didn't really happen. But God actually worked to and gave a human language to speak to this prophet. God can do that, I assume.

Let me see if I can think of the word in theology that works on this. It's called omniscience—knowing all, right? It's the fact that he knows all and he can, omnipotent, he can do all. Now, when you say God can do anything, when you bring up exceptions, you miss the point. When I say God can do anything he wants to do, means that there's nothing you can bring to him and he says, "Oh, I couldn't do that."

No, he has all power, all knowledge, all wisdom, all everything. That's God before the creation of the universe. There was a divine being who existed in eternity, who comes in and creates in-time reality. And you know what? He can do that if he wants to. It's called omnipotence.

By the way, if you read even the Greek philosophers and if you go to my study Bible, I have them listed on chapter one or two, a number of Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, different ones that you would probably know about. Various individuals, and they all talk about the fact that you cannot have a caused cause. You have to have an uncaused cause. He says you need something that starts it off, right?

So God is the uncaused cause. No and—by the way, nothing plus nothing equals nothing. I could sing the song to you, but I won't today. But nothing plus nothing equals nothing is a song that was made up. But you know, it's a theological and philosophical truth. When you have—you have to have something, a first cause, to move to anything else. And God in eternity, which we will never understand, I don't think, but God in eternity is going to come out of that to make something as a causal being, the only one that existed.

Are you with me on this? Okay, so I'm thinking, why can't brilliant people that seem to do well and have their doctorates and teach and so forth, why can't they figure out basic ideas? I don't know, I really don't. Except for the fact—here I'm going to—I don't know if I should say this or not. I don't guess it'll get out of this room. Don't tell anybody.

The fact is that when you look at each of these people, they've all embraced the group called BioLogos, which is a new view started by Francis Collins, who you—you're familiar with that in American studies recently? Which president was he under? I can't remember what. But he became a believer, and he's an evolutionist. And there's this group called BioLogos, you can go on the internet and find it. All these people have joined BioLogos.

And they've become evolutionists, so they have to maintain that idea in contrast to this, and they're trying to make these fit together somehow. They do not fit together, as I will show you later. Okay? So we have these ideas, the poetic structure of the days of creation. I'm not going to go into Hebrew grammar for you, but every single Hebrew expert in language and grammar—I mean, we're talking about this has been—I've examined this quite a bit and it's recognized by each other that Hebrew scholars who are world-famous, not a single one of them deny that Genesis 1, 2, 3, and 4 and 5 all the way through the genealogies of 12 and on and on with Abraham, all these periods were all historical. Not a single one would say that they're mythical, because they're not. They need it to be myth because they've got another allegiance now: evolution. Which is one of the reasons I think is a bad move.

But anyway, so we have these poetic structures. I think there's actually a very high writing. I think they wrote well. I think Moses, when he put together the book of Genesis and the first chapters, he constructs them quite well and interestingly. How it all flows and so forth. So it has some quality to it as a good writer, but it doesn't take away the historicity of it in its inception. Are we with each other?

So I'm just moving you through this group on the various ones. The fact is you have all sorts of things in the Old Testament and New in which we have problems in some people's eyes. For example, was there a Tower of Babel where there were multiple languages that came out? Yes, it says there were. That's my view of scripture. It says it, I believe it. Because first of all, I'm not there, and second of all, I'm not that smart. There's no way to come and figure everything out. I believe the scripture.

By the way, the problem that happens on all with all these things is that when you start denying this one and this one and this one, eventually you have no place to stop. And one of the problems I have—and I'm not sure if I have that in the next slide here or not—but one of these things, it takes me to the New Testament. That's why I told that gentleman, I said I probably wouldn't be a Christian. I could not believe Jesus if what you're saying is true.

Because Jesus actually thought there was an Adam and Eve, I mean, a real one. Not a society that grew in evolution or somebody at the end got the—okay, you're Adam now. The point of it is Jesus believes in a true Adam and Eve, as does Paul and builds his theology on a real Adam and a real Eve. And so how would I deal with scripture if I can't believe in one place? Why can I believe in other places?

And so when I started looking at this, I said, I would have trouble accepting the words of Jesus. Or even this: can you believe that Jesus would actually do a miracle? I mean, how does he do that? Right? I mean, it's not that he prayed, "God, please do a miracle," and there's a God out there somewhere that did the miracle. Jesus did miracle after miracle after miracle.

Try sometime, by the way, if you haven't got much money and want to start a store, get some ideas about how to do this where you can take a couple of loaves of—a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread and give it out, and that little bit turns into a place for thousands of people to eat. Man, just think how much profit you could make! But you can't do that miracle because that's a divine act.

Jesus can do it. Why? Because he's both man and God. One person in two natures. That's our view historically, and I think the correct view of understanding the whole issue of the Trinity and the incarnation of Christ. So we have all sorts of other examples. The universal flood we could talk about, but eventually they'll probably close me down here. But the fact is all these kinds of things we see in the Bible, I accept as true.

I believe there really was other kinds of events that occurred that we see. For example, should I believe that actually you have water that stands on the side? They say, "You can't have"—here's another argument—"the universal flood could not have occurred because you would not have enough time for water to actually recede that well and that way." Really? It can't happen there.

By the way, if you'll watch that movie on Genesis and History, you'll see Del Tackett talking about something that happened in Washington state. That's up in the Northwest. I call it the left coast. Now, when I moved to Texas again—I was born and reared here, but anyway, I went to the Northwest. And so I moved back, and you know what they had up there? They had a massive volcano and it destroyed so much property around and they said, "This will take decades, if not hundreds of years, to come back." And ten years later, it was all like it used to be. Uh oh, what happened? Just to be a scientist, even a geologist, doesn't get you the right answer sometimes.

And so the fact is that we have these visitations of nature that God has implemented that happened differently than sometimes humans think. But other things, we have statements of what happens with God in Jesus. The God-man operating in the human Jesus, doing miracles left and right. And so if I'm going to reject the Old Testament teaching, why should I accept the New?

And so you see my argument? And so I—you'll see some stuff in that I've handed out to you. But see, you look at some of the other issues. Baal and Asherah on Mount Carmel? Anybody been to Israel? If not, I take tours there. Irina here is in charge of all the operations for that. She'd be glad to take your money.

And so we have the situation where you have these prophets of the false deity who didn't exist, made up and worshiped by the people, and Yahweh, the God of Israel, operating through what the prophet does and does a miracle there. That happens. See?

So when I read the Bible, I read it that way. Think about a guy being put into a lion's den and they go to sleep. That's a miracle. Lions usually don't do that. As a matter of fact, when Daniel was taken out of that lion's den and given a free sway to go your way since we're not making any progress, the guys that charged him were put in the lion's den and all of a sudden the lions said, "Oh, lunch!"

And so the fact is God does all sorts of miraculous things. By the way, and we don't see much of that today, we know. But it is going to be occurring again. I've read the Book of Revelation, and you're going to see several things take place. But of course, I'm not going to be here, so that's fine.

So Adam and Eve were in fact humans, but not the first humans. I've already dealt with that question. I don't think you can demonstrate that to be the case. I think they were created by God. I don't think they evolved over hundreds of thousands and millions of years. And I'm going to show you something hopefully here, and if not, I'll give it to you. Forget what I'm doing. I guess it's working. Oh, this is my statement from C.S. Lewis. But anyway, let me just move through this. Oh, by the way, there's the House Visual Study Bible. That's very important.

So what you find is these occurrences occur that we see in the Bible. Questions about Adam and Eve are in fact referring to real people, and that's the basic, basic argument I have here. But the fact is, what about the issues that we see throughout the Bible in reference to inerrancy? Can we believe the theology of the writers of scripture? Where would you find a theology if not from them?

Well, I have a quote here, and I can't find it right now on my little screen. But from a guy by the name of George Wald, W-A-L-D, George Wald, okay? And he wrote in a scientific magazine something that's very interesting. He said, "You know, there are only two possibilities." He's fairly smart. "There are only two possibilities for the question of the creation and what we have around us."

He said, "One is irreducible complexity." Anybody know that term? Irreducible complexity. Go look it up. The fact is nothing plus nothing equals something, or something that's one cell develops into the entire human race and all the animal kingdom. That's amazing. He said that's one option, irreducible complexity, that which was rejected by essentially all the Greek philosophers and us too. Put us in a good group of smart people. Okay.

Now, he says that that were in fact happening, it would be that kind of something irreducible you can't—it's so complex it couldn't have happened. He said so we know that irreducible complexity is not possible and rejected long ago. That's what George Wald, biologist, Harvard University—familiar with that place? Biologist there and he says this is not possible to happen. He said but the only other possibility would be that God created the universe. And he says, "I don't want to believe in God."

What a statement. At least he's honest. He says, "I don't want to believe in God." And he says, "In view of that, I will accept what is impossible: irreducible complexity." You like that argument? Like to be in this guy's class learning biology? Isn't that a great admission, but at least he's honest because he said, "I don't want to believe these things of the Bible, so I'll just simply—accept another argumentation and then create my own ideas." Okay.

So we find all sorts of teachings about Paul. I'm not going to go into all of those, but let me—let me say a few things here a bit about these issues. What about other kinds of questions that you see in Genesis? Anybody ever read in Genesis 6 and you have some people called the Nephilim, or you have certain men actually came and had relations with women and they created these various giants and creatures and so forth? Well, see, that view is an old view, but it's developed in the Bible and interestingly enough you have two authors of scripture who talk about this account.

Now, if I have two authors of scripture, someone like Jude and Peter, who speak about these things, should I accept them as true? You know how much trouble I have accepting it? None. Because I've made a commitment that the scripture in its presentation is stating a fact that God wrote this book. Now, he didn't write it in English, you realize that? Right. It came out in Greek and Hebrew, but you know if you do a good translation and there are some very good translations. Some are not as good as others. I don't use a Newly Inspired Version. I won't say which one that is. You'll have to figure that out. But the nearly inspired version.

But a lot of the translations are pretty good, and in so doing I have to embrace that as true or I'm going to run into a conundrum and I'll find myself running around in circles and trying to even support such ideas as some of the people that I know who are arguing this. I accept these destruction of Sodom, by the way. Did you realize what they have found? Now, this is a place that Irina and I have done excavation together, and it's—it used to be argued another place toward the very end of the Salt Sea, the Dead Sea.

And in reference to Jordan area, which is probably where it was because you could see Sodom between Ai and Bethel in the mountains up above the Salt Sea, they call it the Dead Sea, and the tip of the Jordan River. Up there in the mountains, you could see between Ai and Bethel these two cities that are talked about in the Bible, and they could see Sodom below.

And Abraham's nephew, trying his best to really help his older uncle, he says, "You know what? I'll—I guess I tell you what. I'll just take the lush land across the way where Sodom is, and you can have the desert. Doing my best to help you." And so that's what happened. We know they had to divide their group because they started getting too many.

So Lot went down and became one of the leaders of Sodom, by the way. There's a reason for that. Sitting at the gate means he's like in the City Council. And that's where the two angels went and that's what was destroyed and you know what's interesting now in archaeology? How many are ever been involved in a dig or anything in archaeology? Boy, got a good group to recruit. All right.

Now, if you're there, you find out that this place in Sodom fits a lot of what we know in the text. One, if it was some place like at the very end of the Dead Sea, it would be very difficult. Why? Because you've got to look through a mountain and you've got to look with your telescopic vision about 20 miles south. So if you're Superman and you can see that long and see through mountains, you could do this. But otherwise, you've got problems.

And there's another issue and that fact is when we look at this issue of Sodom, it gives us an understanding but they have now discovered just in recent years that there was a great meteor shower that hit this area in the past. Interestingly enough, about the time of Sodom. It all fits. Same time period, same kind of event, fire coming from—the fire came from heaven. And so we have a pretty good idea probably where it is.

So these kinds of things support us in our understanding of scripture. That's what I'm trying to teach this morning. I'm trying to say, when people come along with alternatives and it sounds good because they are somehow trained academically, it doesn't mean their whole viewpoint is based on their real study but sometimes who they associate with. A lot of people I know, they want to be around certain kinds of people and they don't want to appear foolish around these certain kinds of people. They feel they're more prestigious. I think that's part of the problem.

And so we have so many other things in the scripture that we could look at and I just try to think. I was going to mention something about Rudolf Bultmann. Anybody ever heard the name? Rudolf Bultmann was one of the major scholars of a bygone day. And he was a German scholar and he had an argument. He said, "I believe in science." Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with real science. That's okay, there is a real science. But sometimes science moves into philosophy. Okay?

And the people that sometimes hold to it won't recognize where they've gone. They've made a move and don't really announce it. Bultmann said we know what science is and it is factual. So when you talk about the resurrection of Jesus from the grave, we know that it's impossible for someone to rise from the dead.

And he says science will not let that happen. You cannot have a resurrection from the dead. So he says what we have to believe is not that Jesus physically got up out of that having gone to the cross—and I'll talk about this this next time in the service we're going to have afterwards, I'll go into Jesus a lot—but the fact is that Jesus couldn't come back, so what happened is that he really just stayed in the grave and he rose in our hearts.

Now, don't you feel warm? Jesus rose in our hearts even though he didn't come back from the dead. That's what some of this kind of thinking brings on. It gradually leads you down the path to denial, denial, denial because you've established another source of authority. It's not from God, it's from human beings, another source of authority for your life. See?

And that's where I try to admonish you today about this. His whole concept as I've said at the bottom was modern science has set aside the pre-scientific world of miracles. You see why I said when I left that young man, "If I adopted what you're saying, I have no reason to believe what the Bible says. I have no reason to embrace the miracles of Christ. I have no reason to go through the whole Bible and see a miracle-working God."

And is it more difficult for God to have a worldwide flood that recedes than it is to have two bodies of water that go up and thousands of people walk through it? That's not normal. That's not scientific. And people try to find all sorts of way, "Well, maybe it just got two feet deep, it was sort of receding," and they try to come up with something way but that's not what the Bible's talking about. It's talking about God actually doing a miracle to get his people out of Egypt.

See, I believe in scripture. And it's not because I have not studied the issues and I have written on the issue. It's a fact that we have to make a decision on what makes sense and whether we want to believe God and His Word or not.

So I hope that helps. I have a few minutes left. I could go on if you just want me to keep talking. But I have a Sunday school class. I wouldn't do this in the after service. But do we—if we have a few minutes if anybody has questions? We have 10 minutes, right? Yes.

Guest (Female): What's the difference between theistic evolution and BioLogos?

Dr. Wayne House: BioLogos is a theistic evolution. Francis Collins, who was very important in some presidents'—which one was it? It was Biden's? Okay, well that says a lot. So Francis Collins who started BioLogos became a believer. I'm glad for that. You can be a Christian and have bad ideas. Is that right? Because Christianity doesn't require us were smart or come to all the right decisions, but we've embraced Jesus as our savior from sin. That's what it is. You can be crazy about other things.

Now, so you have that idea BioLogos formed the idea of a theistic evolutionist and a lot of Christians have joined that group. I stood—I won't mention a name here, he's a guy I've known for many, many years and one of the most respected scholars probably that's been in the last many, many decades. I was at an academic meeting, what is called the Society of Biblical Literature. It meets right after the ETS does, which is the Evangelical Theological Society, which what I'm—I belong to both groups.

But the fact is he was standing there and looking and he started talking about he had just spent the weekend at this group with BioLogos. And he was so fascinated by it. And when he finished, he was talking about how much it meant, how well it—the arguments, and I looked at him and I said, "So and so," I said, "I have no agreement with anything you've said." And all of a sudden his face just dropped. Because here's my friend, I know his scholarship, he knows where I am, and he recognizes that I do not embrace what he said and our relationship somewhat separated at that point.

That happens sometimes and you have to make a decision. On the other hand, I try to stay away from criticizing individuals per se because I'm interested more in the arguments than I am talking about people because I'm hoping that sometimes they make a turnaround. Another question? Or did I answer your question? Okay. Anybody else? Yes.

Guest (Male 2): So you talked about the receding waters. Well, I have the understanding that the flood did some miraculous things to the land that was created, by raising up huge mountains and separating them into continents. If that was the case, that would give places for the water to go.

Dr. Wayne House: I think you're on the right track here. The fact is the level of the sea as it is today and the level at the time of the flood probably is not the same level. And the mountains actually are said to have risen. And so the water receding is less. So we have several things going on with the flood that might actually answer the question of why do you have high levels above the mountains? Which mountains? There're lots of kinds of mountains. There's Mount Everest, there's Mount St. Helens. So you have different mountains. So which ones are we talking about? It doesn't tell you.

But I think you could have a receding of the ocean area and you could also have the fact of the mountains actually also going down. So I don't really have an issue with that. They haven't ever demonstrated that Noah's flood couldn't happen. They sometimes people may question it and make some innuendos of some sort, but I don't have any problem with the scripture talking about that.

See, certain things happen—take the Tower of Babel. Can people actually move from the Tower of Babel where they had one language and all of a sudden—I mean, I know that God's powerful, but could he do this? Make all their languages change. Is that possible? Listen, I've gone through some—I won't go into my history—but I've gone through surgery where you sort of have a lapse of memory in certain things and you're under too much anesthesia and so forth and it cause you to forget words and it's sort of a crazy experience in the brain.

You know, I think God could probably—if he can make a talking mule, I suspect God can alter the language groups in the world at that time. And would they even—would they even know that? See, if you never really had much, you may have lost your memory on it and the next thing you wake up and all of a sudden you're talking different languages. And you have to separate.

See, if I have a God who can say, "Let it be and it is," by the Word of God, the writer of Hebrews says, the world was made. We find that in scripture. If I have an all-powerful God, could he possibly alter the languages of humanity? And the answer is unequivocally: no problem.

See, that's my view of God, that's my view of scripture. Now, I'm more than well willing to stand before God and tell him that's my view because I think he agrees. As a matter of fact, I agree with him is what it is. Thank you. Any other question? I have just a few minutes. We'll not be taking these in the sermon I don't think. Yes.

Guest (Male 2): Just a quick statement about the water being still here but you find it frozen on both poles now.

Dr. Wayne House: Oh yeah, yeah. That would make a difference, wouldn't it? Yeah, that's true. If you have the—for example, the North and South Pole, particularly the South Pole, if you have them having massive amounts of ice throughout the area, that would have a difference on the—on the water. So anyway, the cop has now come and given me a yellow. Anybody had the yellow light behind you? Anyway, anybody else?

Well, this has been a fun Sunday school class. I've never done one like this, but it's been really energizing to me and I hope helpful to you. And they have printed off a lot of things. Let me just say something about this and the time I have left. I like charts. I don't know if anybody owns any of my charts books that I have done, probably ten of them. I sort of started the thing out back in the '70s and people started doing them after that.

But I have all sorts of big charts books with that have done quite well on theology and New Testament and world religions and cults and on and on and on. And I've got four new ones coming out, one on biblical archaeology and then some other stuff I won't even go into.

But the point of it is I like to do things like this. So some of these things I put little charts in here to explain what I'm talking about and you can look at the what some people are saying, what other people are saying and it sort of makes it easier for you to understand some of the things I've talked about today. And so I'll let you—I'll let you take a look, these are all free, okay?

Now, if you decide afterwards you like to have the House Visual Study Bible, just simply go to hwhouse.com and you can look at all the other stuff and if you decide that you can. All right, God's blessings on you. Do you have a prayer after? Thanks.