The Creation: Something from Nothing

0:00Hi, it's Michael A. with Evidence for Faith. I want to take a moment and let you know that we're doing a pledge drive. If you sign on to become a member, a monthly donor for our ministry and pledge a minimum of $100 a month, we'll send you a free t-shirt. Our ministry depends you see on donations and gifts from people just like you. Consider giving us and helping us reach our goal to be a major influence on the world. Thanks so much. Take care and we got blessed. Hi, welcome to Evidence for Faith, it's your host Michael A. back and another one of our lessons dealing with the creation. So in our creation series, this is lesson number two, but I want to recap something before we get into this lesson that's very important from the last lesson. And the last lesson was, is there a god? And I said in that lesson, you see, we cannot scientifically prove that there's not a god. We can't scientifically prove there is a god. You

1:01just can't do an experiment like in a lab. For instance, if I was to take this liquid and pour this in here, we see a reaction occur, but the thing is, we're never going to be able to do some experiment that all of a sudden we see, oh look, God's coming up out of the beaker. It just doesn't happen like that. So no, you can't scientifically prove, but as we saw in the last lesson, logic dictates at least the possibility that there is a god. Now with that, let's get into this new lesson. This one is called something from nothing, ex nihilo, very common statement. So we'll get into that. A while back, I did something I very seldom ever do. A person called me up and asked me, actually invited me to go out to coffee with him. He wanted to discuss the origins of the universe, the beginning of life. Now, as I said, I usually do not do this with a stranger. I have no idea,

2:02but this person had heard me speak someplace. And I don't know why, but I sort of felt compelled to go get a cup of tea with him. And we sat and we had a discussion. Now, as we sat drinking our preferred beverages, he was drinking coffee. I do not do coffee. I have my cup of tea here. And as we were sitting there having our beverages, he told me that the creation by ex nihilo, that's the universe being created out of nothing had been disproven by the quantum vacuum. Having to do with quantum physics and stuff. He was citing actually a paper by Dr. Edward Tyron, who has basically said that the universe had its physical origin because of a fluctuation of some pre-existing vacuum. This idea has actually been around since the 1970s. Even Discover magazine had an article back in 2002 titled Gooth's Grand Guest, which was by Dr. Ellen Gooth. And he

3:05states in that article, quote, theoretically, anything a dog, a house, a planet can pop into existence by means of this quantum quirk, which physicists call a vacuum fluctuation. So this was the discussion we were having. The idea that matter can just pop out into existence out of nothing like that out of this vacuum, out of nothingness, sort of like in a way, sort of like magic in this way I view it. I recall this fellow as he was sitting there sipping his tea and telling me this, how quantum physics and this this vacuum fluctuation actually disproved the whole thing dealing with God. And now this is how life began. And I remember him sitting back with a smirk on his face like saying, boy, I got you. He finished his argument by telling me that believing in an eternal God was something extremely primitive and not supported and all by any type of science. Hmm. Now, I lean back in my chair and asked him, where in your science

4:11that you just described is a testable and observable proof of what you just said. He replied mathematics. Mathematics was his proof. I said, no, no, no, hold on. You're not giving me something that is testable and observable. You can't prove what you're saying. All you have is a theory. You are basing everything upon assumptions in theory. That's it. You have nothing, absolutely nothing that can support something. Actually, I said, what's more, if you are correct, I told him, that means that energy, energy and certain properties had to already be in existence to produce the quirk, as you called it, out of nothingness. Energy thus would have to be pre-existing. So it's not something out of nothing. You are telling me that there has to be some type of an energy in a vacuum fluctuation. Now, on this idea, I've sort of amused in a way by the late Carl Sagan.

5:13He died a number of years ago, but he had an explanation sort of on the origin of the universe also. That I found when he explained this in a video that I was watching of him doing a lecture, he took a rubber band and actually he stated that the universe is like a rubber band. That what happened was matter is existing. It's here, but then it expands outward. And we do know the universe is expanding. It expands outward. And as it gets out, it slows down. And then like a rubber band, it comes back and smacks everything is destroyed. But then it goes back out again. And he proposed to say that this was an idea of the way he believed the universe was going with this rubber band idea. As I watched him do this, it was sort of interesting. I mean, to me, though, begged a very serious question, where the rubber band come from. But he said that this is like something that's been repeated throughout eternity. It's always been there. Well, that doesn't make sense because

6:16everything that exists seems to have from everything we see just in logic and in science alone had a starting point. And that is not something out of nothing. Now, the Bible, of course, does teach a lot having to do with the origin of the universe. It doesn't give us many details, but the Bible does actually contain defining statements that it was God who created the universe or the cosmos, if you will, as Satan liked to call it. And it was created out of nothing. It definitely is found in the Westminster confessions of faith. Now, that was produced just to give you a little history here. That was produced by 121 Puritans back in the year 1649. Chapter four, if you ever sit down and read this, it's on public domain. You don't have to buy the book, but you can read this and it reads, thus, it pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the man is the station of the

7:17glory of his eternal power, wisdom and goodness in the beginning to create or to make of nothing the world. And all things therein, whether visible or invisible in the space of six days and all very good. Now, this is the Westminster Confessions. It's not divine spiritual words of, it's not the Bible, in other words. It's man's interpretation of Bible, but I believe it's pretty accurate on these lines where it says that God created everything out of nothing. You see, if you go back to Genesis 1-1, it says, and most people know this, even critics know this verse, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the word for created is interesting. It's the word in Hebrew, ba-ra, ba-ra, and it's usage here. Does that mean to restructure something, to reform it? Like, if you had a ball of clay, shape it into one object and shape it into another. That's not what that word is meaning here. It means to create out of nothing.

8:20We read the same thing going into Hebrews chapter 1 verse 2 that Jesus created the world. And we're using a Greek word here because this New Testament, again, talking about making something out of nothing. In John chapter 1 verse 3, again, we read that all things all matter, all substance and was made through Jesus. It was God. Oh, I love one of my favorite passages. This is in Colossians chapter 1 16. We read that Jesus created all things. God already existed. To do the creating, he has to already be in existence. He's got to be outside the box, as we talked about in the last lesson. If everything that exists is this box, and if everything the universe, the cosmos, everything is inside this box, God has to be outside of the box to create the box. He did come into the box and God did make himself manifest and he walked around for about 33 years.

9:21God came in the form of man and walked around so we could see him, the creator himself. God already existed in the cosmos. And what he did is miraculous that he created the entire cosmos out of nothing. It does not say that he remodeled it. It does not say that he reformed it out of an earlier substance. That is nowhere found in Scripture. That is man's interpretation trying to find you can excuse to not believe in the existence of God. Something had to exist. The laws of science, the laws of mathematics, the laws of time, the laws of nature, they all have a beginning. Look around. You will see everything that is around, particularly living things all have a beginning. It's just logical. Thus, your choice is this. Either everything just came from nothing like all of a sudden, boom, here's everything. And we can't even do an experiment here in the studio

10:24showing something like that because there's air here. I'd have to form a vacuum and remove that. But the thing is, even light photons will be going through there. You can't just get something out of nothing. It doesn't happen. So your choice is, well, I'm going to say that things came into existence out of nothing. Or you have to admit, there's the possibility at least that there's an Almighty God, an intelligent designer who's not bound inside the box, but he created the box, and he's around the box. And he is the one who made the laws of science, who formed the whole mathematical principles of time, of nature, of gravity, etc. There is a creator who is very precise in what he did. And we'll see that in a future lesson when we talk about the Anthropic Principle that he was very precise in how everything is absolutely perfect. It's amazing. You see, critics don't like to look at Scripture. They don't like to look at this book, except to make fun of it or whatever. But the Holy Scriptures do give us an account on the existence of God.

11:30What we're talking about in creation is a miracle. Well, the Bible is full of miracles. Miracles do happen. They do. For instance, Jesus, when God came in the form of man and walked around for 30 something years in a ministry of about three and a half years, he performed many, many miracles that cannot be explained. How limbs were reformed on someone or created a new or someone was missing something. It grew. People who were sick, walking on water, and it's not frozen, it's liquid. Having all sorts of things, rising from the dead, bringing people back from it, these are things that you just don't see. A blind person who was born blind, being able to see the death, being able to hear the lame, being able to, these are miracles. And yes, they are recorded in here, but they're also recorded, believe it or not, there were non-Christian historians back in ancient days that actually talked about Jesus and that he was a miracle worker. Flagon, in some of his writings, describes this,

12:35Celsius, another famous historian. He describes it. Josephus is another one that works at Josephus. He has a paragraph talking about that he was able to do things that are miraculous. So we see miracles actually occurring. Now this Bible also contains stories and things about characters and places and stuff where archaeology is showing that the stories and these characters, these things are true. So the science of archaeology is supporting that there is a God. It's fascinating because we keep seeing this book being upheld even by archaeology where we have omg, maybe just shy of a million artifacts that have been discovered. Not one of them disproves the Bible. They support the Bible. I mean thousands of critics have turned to the acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is Lord from evidence just like this. Now yes, this is what some people would call circumstantial evidence for God's existence. But they're provable. These things are provable.

13:37Inclusion, let me just say this, out of nothing, something began. We call it creation. God was there nothing more in the beginning than he began to create. He created stuff out of nothing. Miracle, the universe we know is expanding. Carl Sagan even acknowledged that the universe is expanding. We also know it's accelerating. But if it's expanding, that means it had a starting point. Now as I say, Carl Sagan with his Roper ban says it's just been eternity. The matter has always been there. Well that doesn't make sense. Matter just doesn't exist. It had to have a starting point. And so that's what we see here. Something had to create all this. This is supernatural. And God is supernatural, meaning nature and science can't explain him. What's more since he did create you, he created me, he created the cosmos with all of the stars, the beautiful designs, etc.

14:43He also gave everything a purpose. There is a purpose for every single thing that exists. The purpose for the cosmos is to glorify God. And the more we are able to study it, the more it it just shouts the existence of God, as the psalmist said, we were designed as people. We were designed to worship this Creator. That's why we exist. And who is the Creator, but Jesus Christ, He is God and the Creator of all things. Well thanks for joining me. I hope you tune in as we continue in this series, which is going to have quite a few lessons in it. But I really hope you will share this with other people. Go ahead, subscribe. Please subscribe. That helps us in our ministry. And look at the other things that we have available all for free. And thanks so much for joining me today. Until we meet again, take care and may God bless.