Our Catechism / Q1 / Adults

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According to Genesis 1:1-2:25, what did God do?

• God made everything and gave life to it.

According to Psalm 104:1-35, what would happen if God did not sustain Creation?

• Everything would come apart.

According to Genesis 1:1-2:25, when did God do this?

• At the very beginning. It is God who created Time.

According to Genesis 1:1-2:25, what existed before God created?

• Only God. He has always existed, and He created everything Ex-Nilo (Latin for “out of nothing”).

According to Exodus 3:1-22, God’s Name indicates what?

• That He is eternal, and the source of all existence. Thus, we speak of His Transcendence for He is essentially different from His creation in every way. Omnipotent, Omniscient, & Omnipresent (see Isaiah 46:1-13).

How is this Theistic idea of an intelligent being designing and creating, different from the Atheistic idea of Scientific Materialism?

• According to Scientific Materialism, Matter has no beginning and no end. It exists simply because it does. Life has no design it is a chaotic fury of chance and happenstance. But if we were designed then there is an intent and a purpose. Similar to how gravity draws celestial bodies into orbit around larger bodies, providing them with stable pathways; so also design explains the instinctive longing of Humans for something greater than ourselves.

According to Psalm 19:1-14 all of Nature “declares” itself to be God’s Creation, how does this inform your reading of Romans 1:1-32?

• God’s “fingerprints” are everywhere, all we have to do is look for them, but if we don’t want to see the evidence of His work, then we won’t. Instead, we will make excuses to ignore the evidence and we will seek out other, less reasonable explanations for the origin of Life.

How do we make sense of the fact that in Acts 17:16-34 the Apostle Paul quotes the pagan philosopher Epimenides (Cretica, 600 BC) when he says that it is in God that we live and move and have our being?

• We know from the other readings here that God has imprinted truth into Creation, therefore, to know the truth even if we do not know why it is true or the source from which that truth is derived, in no way makes it less the truth.

According to Acts 17:16-34, the Unknown God has revealed Himself for what reason?

• So that we may know Him and place our trust (faith) in Him. This is what it means when Paul says that God is calling us to Repent
• In this way, the Jewish/Christian understanding of God is unique among all the religions of the world. Hinduism remains uncertain whether we can know that God is personal, or infinite in his perfections. Islam affirms that God is infinite in his perfections but is uncertain if God can be personally knowable. Buddhism is officially nontheistic, denying all first causes, including God.
• In contrast, Christians affirm that while God is unknowable unless He reveals Himself to us, He has revealed Himself to us because He longs for us to know Him and love Him and live fully alive through Him.

ACCESS POINTS

Logic Exercise: How do you Prove Something is True or False?

Put together a Puzzle: Put together a puzzle, but don't look at the picture and hide some of the pieces. Reflect on how this impacts the process of putting the puzzle together.

Watch this Video: View these Bible Project on Genesis 1 and then check out the accompanying study notes provided https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/genesis-1/

Craft Project: Make your own Picture Book of Creation.

Role Play: Pretend you are blind. What do you see? Is the world still there? How do you know?

Build a Model of the Solar System: Notice how everything is balanced perfectly? This is called the “finetuning” of the universe.

Logic Exercise: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Logic Exercise: If the Atheistic Scientific Materialist worldview is true, then what purpose is there to life?

Watch these Videos: View these videos about the scientific evidence for a Creatorhttps://pinerunemc.org/god-and-science

Role Play: How would you share this information with your Neighbor?

GO DEEPER

If you would like to continue to study this subject on your own, we recommend the following resources:

Answers Research Journal from Answers in Genesis > Cutting-edge Creation research. The ARJ is a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework. https://answersresearchjournal.org/

Is Genesis History from Dr. Del Tackett > A fascinating new look at the biblical, historical, and scientific evidence for Creation and the Flood. Learn from more than a dozen scientists and scholars as they explore the world around us in light of Genesis. https://isgenesishistory.com/

Biblical Science Institute from Dr. Jason Lisle > One of the silliest myths of our culture is the story of particles-to-people evolution – that all life is an unplanned byproduct of mindless chemistry. Even more absurd is that this story is taught as if it were somehow the scientific position, as if it had abundant supporting evidence and as if it were the only rational possibility. The great irony is that the opposite is true. Evolution is nothing but a scientifically bankrupt conjecture. https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/

Evolution News & Science Today from The Discovery Institute > EN publishes work by scientists associated with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture as well as independent scholars and writers. Scientists may comment on developments in their own field, but, as appropriate, may also wish to comment on other fields in an interdisciplinary spirit. All published writing is expected to meet high standards of factual accuracy, balance, fairness, clarity, and timeliness. Editors are responsible for ensuring that articles maintain these standards. https://evolutionnews.org/

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Can We Know God?

Q2 / ADULTS