Dr. George Tiller and "Defensive Action"

If you are concerned with the abortion issue at all, you already know about Dr. George Tiller's death. Tiller was the late term abortionist who operated a clinic in Wichita, Kansas. He was shot to death while serving as an usher in his church on Sunday, May 31st, 2009.

In 1993, I moved into a house directly across the street from one of America's most notorious abortion clinics, Aware Woman Center for Choice in Melbourne, Florida. I had been involved in pro-life activism at abortion clinics since 1989 and was especially concerned that, after the shooting deaths of two abortionists in 1993 and 1994, the movement was in serious trouble. Rather than duck and cover like so many other Christian media outlets had done, I felt it was the right time to confront the issue head on with a viable solution. I later bought the house and it became a staging area for peaceful protest. I became obnoxious to both the abortionists, who attempted unsuccessfully to sue me, and even to some pro-lifers who refused to act without a proper respect for the guidance of seasoned pro-life pastors and leaders. I even banned several people from use of my property who refused to follow the protocol I demanded as the owner. Eventually, the clinic was forced to close in 1999 and the owners chose to retire rather than relocate.

Back in 1993, the prospect of furthering peaceful resistance looked bleak. With the election of Bill Clinton, restrictive federal laws were created concerning free speech and assembly. The right to protest in front of the only abortion clinic in Melbourne, Florida was made illegal for a time. Such laws, which were applied only to pro-lifers, would have been unthinkable had they been applied to any other social activist group. Civil rights protesters who trespassed in "whites only" restaurants, PETA protesters who spray paint fur, and environmental activists who chain themselves to redwoods to save the trees from logging companies are not only tolerated under the first amendment, but even celebrated within their own community of advocates. But with the election of Clinton, pro-life speech suddenly became illegal. The reason given, of course, was to curb the "terrorism" of the defensive action crowd within the pro-life movement.

The crisis of principles was inevitable. Pro-life advocates believe abortion is murder. Many of us were drawn into pro-life activism because we were challenged by a radical idea.

If you believe that abortion is murder, then act like it is murder!

Taken to a logical extreme comes the philosophy of defensive action -- that it is permissible to use violent force in resistance to a more egregious violent force. I wrote a response to defensive action in 1993, called Justifiable Homicide that was published in the Christian Reconstructionist magazine, The Chalcedon Report. The article has been referenced by both pro-life and pro-abortion activists. I won't paste my argument in its entirety into this blog entry, but it is available at our website:

http://www.forerunner.com/chalcedon/X0003_3._Justifiable_homic.html

Defensive action is the idea that violent force in the defense of life is permissible since a human life is being taken in an abortion. Since the civil magistrates' duty is to protect life is being neglected, it is logical to a certain type of mind that individual violent resistance becomes permissible in these cases. Defensive action advocates claim that this is not vigilantism, but the necessary use of violent force in defense of life.

In 1993, Rachelle Shannon used this rationale to shot Dr. Tiller in both arms with a .32 caliber pistol -- a gun that is able to kill, but usually does not incapacitate people. Her intent was merely to prevent his ability to commit abortion that day, but not to kill. I remember at the time wondering why in heaven's name, if she used this argument to justify her defensive action, she simply didn't finish the job once and for all. As one activist remarked, "This woman is a disgrace both to our pro-life ethic and our marksmanship!"

I've spent many hours debating with the defensive action crowd. I will be the first to say that their argument, although wrong, deserves careful scrutiny. I actually agree with defensive action in certain cases. Think of the following situation. Let's say a serial child molester was released from prison. It defies all justice that the man was released, but let's suppose that an extreme circumstance was responsible for this travesty. Suppose also that this sociopath has moved into your neighborhood. Soon after that you discover that your six-year-old daughter has wandered on to his property. After a frantic search, you find your child pinned to the ground by the man in the very act of rape. You hold a baseball bat in your hand.

Is it permissible in this case to use deadly force in defense of life?

Let's say a group of pastors in Nazi Germany begin to participate in a strategy of espionage that results in several assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. We applaud the resistance of brave Lutheran pastors and erstwhile pacifists such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoeller, precisely because their defensive action in taking one life would have prevented the killing of at least tens of millions.

What makes killing abortion doctors any different?

The reason is that the defensive action scenarios and their actual implementation have never taken place within the confines of God's law. That is not to say that they cannot in any circumstance be justified. For instance, if a family member, let's say a 16-year-old daughter, was about to kill her unborn child and was inside the abortion clinic with a police presence that prevented you from interceding for the life of the baby. I believe it would be permissible to use violent force to prevent the abortionist from murdering your grandchild. In this example, I would agree with violent defensive action.

However, under God's moral law, we cannot act outside the authority of the civil magistrate to prevent all murder in all cases through the use of deadly force. The only exceptions to this would be the case of a war action, defending a family member, which I've mentioned, or a case in which all other options of non-violent resistance would be ineffective to defend a helpless victim. None of the four deadly shootings of abortion doctors that have occurred since 1993 fit these parameters.

It is also good to keep this in perspective. Four cases have occurred in 16 years in which abortion doctors have been shot to death in the United States. Yet since Roe v. Wade was decided, about 45 million unborn baby boys and girls have been slaughtered.

“Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord GOD, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live?” - Ezekiel 18:23

Except for the sorrow expressed by God himself when an unrepentant sinner perishes, I don't mourn the death of those who deserve death. I expect that the general public's attitude toward Tiller's assassination is going to be a lot less austere than it was in 1993. We have a president who refused to vote to protect babies even in the ninth month of pregnancy. It's no coincidence that abortion clinic related violence decreases when a pro-life president is in office, but increases when extreme pro-abortion legislation is enacted that is out of the mainstream of American public opinion.

Barack Obama is responsible for creating the atmosphere of violence among the defensive action folks in the pro-life movement, just as Bill Clinton and Janet Reno through their jackbooted federal thuggery were responsible for creating the frustrated backlash that erupted from among a fringe element. These violent activists were previously quelled by opportunities for social and political resistance within the larger peaceful movement.

As John F. Kennedy said about the civil rights movement, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

Dr. Peter Hammond and Frontline Fellowship

I had a couple of dynamic spiritual experiences this week. The first was meeting Dr. Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship, South Africa. Dr. Hammond is a personal “hero” of mine and is doing more to promote true Revival than anyone I can think of. He spoke of his mission’s work in Africa – the vision is no less than “All of Africa for Christ.” Hammond understands that Revival isn’t simply life-changing on a personal and pietistic level, but nation-changing and world-changing as well.

I highly encourage people to visit their website: http://www.frontline.org.za/

Other resources are available here: http://www.reformationsa.org/

Not only are there numerous messages available for download, but sermons have also been prepared as power point presentations that you yourself can present and teach to your small group or church meeting. When presented under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, these presentations are truly life-changing, nation-changing and world-changing.

Dr. Hammond emphasized the following points:

1. John Calvin, although he is not primarily known as a social reformer and an evangelist, was more full-orbed in his theology and social theory than most people realize. Calvin’s view on justification by faith and a resulting sanctification translated into the increase of Christian efforts to reform the society of his own day and in succeeding generations.

2. John Knox and the Scottish Covenanters are primarily known as the founders of the Presbyterian movement. Yet this revival was not just a reformation of doctrine in the Scottish church, but also a spiritual awakening that affected the entire country of Scotland. This was the first nation in modern history that was literally converted en masse to Christ. According to Iain Murray, author of The Puritan Hope, there was not a household in Scotland in which one of the members experienced a profound conversion to Christ. The nation itself was born-again and the people of 16th and 17th century Scotland covenanted with God.

3. The English version of the Presbyterians, the Puritans, were responsible for bringing this vision to England and America. Men such as Oliver Cromwell, William Bradford and John Winthrop changed not only the politics of the west, but their lives resulted in a greater evangelistic thrust for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

4. In the 18th century we can say much the same about the lives of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. Their preaching of the Gospel, far from being a “salvation-only” message, affected all aspects of society.

5. By comparison, today’s Calvinists (and we evangelicals in general) are frozen in our devotion to God. We tend to neglect fervent prayer, emotional expression in worship and evangelism. If they were alive today, the Calvinists of the past would hardly recognize today’s Calvinists as being representative of their lives’ work.

6. We are currently undergoing a paradigm shift in the evangelical church from pervasive and being an ardent dispensational premillennialism to a postmillennial activism. This shift in eschatological outlook will be vital to the future of Christian cultural transformation.

7. The greatest century of missions was the 19th century. The world missions movement was initially fueled by the postmillennial hope. The eschatology of the founders of modern Protestant missions was almost universally optimistic. The result of this postmillennial worldview was claiming the nations for Christ.

8. The prospects faced by William Carey, George Mueller, David Livingstone and others in plowing the rocky soil in Africa, Asia and other “dark continents” was thought to be “dismal.” The immediate result of their efforts was a handful of converts. If these men had the eschatology and vision of today’s Christians, they would not have had the long term outlook that enabled them to persevere. The great irony is that by the end of the 20th century, hundreds of millions of Christian converts have streamed into the kingdom of God. These men didn’t live to see the fulfillment of the promise, but believed. Yet most Christians today are seeing the fulfillment, but don’t have their hope.

9. Frontline Fellowship’s vision is the transformation of all of Africa and the world. Neo-Puritanism is having an impact in these nations from children in home schools and church schools to the highest levels of government where presidents and high ranking officials are being impacted with world changing Gospel teaching.

10. In Sudan and other places, Christians are being martyred for their faith. What should be our response to this? We need to elect politicians with the backbone of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who stood up to communism, not to appease anti-Christian tyranny, but to defeat it. Our attitude toward militant Islam should not be a “turn-the-other-cheek-pacifism.” Military action by African Christians in defense against Islam is not only permissible from a New Testament perspective, but mandated to defend the faith. There could even come a time in America when Christians may have to take up arms against invasive regimes, false religions and an oppressive government in our own land.

Gallup Poll: Most Americans now pro-life

The first time I participate in a Gallup Poll I change history!

Last week I got a phone call from Gallup asking for ten minutes of my time in order to participate in a poll. The first question was about whether I approved of President Obama, so wanting my voice to be heard on this issue, I persevered to the end. Almost every demographic question possible was asked including: "Do you consider yourself pro-life or pro-choice?"

Imagine my surprise about a week later when I read this news item:

The latest Gallup poll on abortion found that 51 percent of those questioned call themselves "prolife" - the first time a majority of US adults have identified themselves as such since Gallup began asking this question in 1995 ... Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,015 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 7-10, 2009.

This might seem like a trite statement to say, "I changed history," but people really are influenced by public opinion polls. If the trend continues the pro-aborts can no longer say, "The vast majority of Americans are pro-choice!"

If there is a lesson to be learned here it is that if you want to be a world changer, you must often participate in the process, no matter how mundane it sometimes feels.

Is “Nero” in the new Star Trek movie an intentional Christian allegory?

If you haven’t seen Star Trek XI, you need to drop everything and go out and spend $10 (or whatever it costs in your town to see a movie these days) and see it. Not only is it the best Star Trek movie by far, but it will be the biggest movie of the year and shockingly, despite all the hype, it is much better than expected. I could go on and repeat all the critical drivel about how it will revive the franchise, how great is Chris Pine’s portrayal of Captain James T. Kirk, blah, blah, blah, but I won’t.



I am thinking that the “Nero” character in the new Star Trek movie is an intentional Christian allegory.

The “mythology” of a science fiction or fantasy series, whether it is The X-Files, Star Wars or Dune, works on several levels. There is the “back story” of a series, which enables the audience suspend ignorance and disbelief about the characters and their world. In The X-Files, Fox Mulder is obsessed with UFOs because he wants to believe that his younger sister’s disappearance when they were children is due to an alien abduction. It is what drives him to believe that “the truth is out there.” In Star Wars, the audience is asked from the beginning to understand that this is a mythological setting, for the story takes place, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ...” And thus we are willing to accept that there can be no reference to the world we are from. In Star Wars the impossibility of faster than light travel is explained by the existence of “hyper-space” – another dimension where those nagging laws of Einstein’s do not interfere. In Dune, the entire mythology revolves around the production of spice on the desert world of Arrakis or Dune, which not only makes interstellar travel possible, but drives the entire culture of the galaxy as well.

Science fiction and fantasy writers also draw upon mythic symbolism and universal archetypes. They capture the audience’s sense of wonder appealing to a deeper level of emotion and spiritual awareness. Therefore, George Lucas became an avid follower of Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and self-consciously used these symbols and stories in each of the Star Wars movies. Ursula K. LeGuin, author of The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, wrote what she called not science fiction but “thought experiments” relying on Jungian psychology and Eastern symbolism found in the Tao Te Ching. Frank Herbert, author of Dune, drew from biblical messianic prophecy tinged with ancient mythology and Arabic sounding words suggesting the religion of Islam. Other fantasy authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used Christian symbolism, although Tolkien claimed he hated the very idea of allegory and had no such intentions.

The original series of Star Trek was no stranger to allegory, mythology and dense symbolism. However, Christianity is the most common mythic reference. (Here I use the word “myth” in it’s proper literary sense.) One example is Episode 44 of Star Trek: The Original Series, entitled “Bread and Circuses,” a story about a planet whose leader has imitated the culture of the Roman Empire, but with 1960s technology. In the episode, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise encounters a persecuted minority known as “sun worshipers” who help McCoy and Spock escape certain death in the gladiator arena.

KIRK: Gentlemen.

MCCOY: Captain, I see on your report Flavius was killed. I am sorry. I liked that huge sun worshiper.

SPOCK: I wish we could have examined that belief of his more closely. It seems illogical for a sun worshiper to develop a philosophy of total brotherhood. Sun worship is usually a primitive superstition religion.

UHURA: I'm afraid you have it all wrong, Mister Spock, all of you. I've been monitoring some of their old-style radio waves, the empire spokesman trying to ridicule their religion. But he couldn't. Don't you understand? It's not the sun up in the sky. It's the Son of God.

KIRK: Caesar and Christ. They had them both. And the word is spreading only now.

MCCOY: A philosophy of total love and total brotherhood.

SPOCK: It will replace their imperial Rome, but it will happen in their twentieth century.

KIRK: Wouldn't it be something to watch, to be a part of? To see it happen all over again? Mister Chekov, take us out of orbit. Ahead warp factor one.

CHEKOV: Aye, sir.

A scene from “Bread and Circuses”

When I was a child I liked Mr. Spock and I even had a Vulcan haircut for a while, but I became a more serious fan of the show once I realized that each episode was a social commentary on one of the many issues during the turbulent 1960s. I was chagrined to realize when I visited Russia and Ukraine eleven times in the 1990s that the show never caught on in Europe or even in the post-Soviet Union. It made no sense at first, since the average Russian school child knew more about the American space program than we did and the whole society idolized its cosmonauts. They loved The X-Files and Star Wars, so why not Star Trek?

Finally, I realized that most Europeans disdained Star Trek as a crass expression of the American notion of Manifest Destiny. Not only would we take over the world, but an American styled “United Federation of Planets” would one day colonize space. Note that the crew of the Enterprise is multicultural and multi-ethnic, but the captain is predictably American. They hated that.

In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan stepped up nuclear arms production in an attempt to win the cold war, William Shatner’s character appeared in the lyrics to a song, “99 Red Balloons,” by a one-hit-wonder German group, Nena, in a wry screed against the idea that a nuclear war is winnable.

Ninety-nine knights of the air
Ride super-high-tech jet fighters
Everyone’s a super hero
Everyone’s a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify, and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
As ninety-nine red balloons go by

But I digress.

A few years ago, I produced a preterist video commentary on Revelation 13 featuring Dr. Kenneth Gentry called The Beast of Revelation: Identified. Copies are always available on our website.

The preterist view of Revelation sees most of the events taking place in the first century since John was writing to seven churches in Asia Minor. In contrast to the preterist view, there are three other hermeneutic approaches to the book of Revelation.

Futurism is the most common “end-times view” of our day. According to the futurist, the book of Revelation is yet to be fulfilled. The locust plagues of Revelation 9 might be interpreted to be Cobra helicopters attacking modern day Israel. The Beast of Revelation 13 is a future world dictator.

Historicism is a view that states that the prophecies of the book of Revelation was fulfilled sometime in history, but not in the first century or in the future. The black plague of the Middle Ages might be interpreted to be one of the plagues brought by the four horsemen of Revelation 6. The pope at the time of Martin Luther is thought to be the Beast of Revelation 13.

Idealism is the spiritualist approach to Bible prophecy. This view states that the prophecies of Revelation are not to be taken literally, but have a general symbolic application in all history. The heavenly battle of Revelation 12 is thought to describe the ongoing battle between good and evil in the spiritual realm. The Beast of Revelation 13 might be any ruler in history who persecutes the church.

I find the preterist view to be most compelling because it has Caesar Nero as the Beast of Revelation 13. In fact, when we understand the historical background of the New Testament, we can see a lot of historical parallels in John’s vision to events that took place in the first century.

In Revelation 12 particularly, we see the figure of the Christ child who is persecuted by the dragon.

Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days. And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Revelation 12:1-9).

From a preterist point of view, this speaks of Israel, the Christ child, and the Church. Israel, the Old Covenant church, gives birth to the Christ child. But as soon as this happens, Satan, symbolized by the dragon, leads a war against Christ attempting to kill him through the Roman Empire’s military rulers. The first instance of this was the attempted murder of the Christ child by King Herod the Great.

Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men … Now when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the young Child’s life are dead.” Then he arose, took the young Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:16-23).

After this occurs, Christ is finally crucified under the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. He is resurrected from the dead, however, and is caught up to God’s throne. There He now rules the nations with a rod of iron. In the meantime, Satan is enraged with “the seed of the woman,” the church, and persecutes her through the Emperor Nero.

Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent. So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ (Revelation 12: 13-17).

In Revelation 13 and 17, the “beast from the sea” and his number, “six hundred sixty-six,” is a symbol and cryptogram for Caesar Nero. This “Beast” has his power and authority to persecute the church from the dragon, the devil. The judgments on the “land” of the Jewish people are recounted in Revelation 18 and 19 leading up to the demolition of the Temple.

I cannot delve into a full-blown exposition of a difficult and controversial text here. I recommend if you want to know more about the preterist view that you check out the DVD, The Beast of Revelation: Identified, or one of Ken Gentry’s or David Chilton’s excellent books on the subject. It’s an interpretation that has had a minority following in church history, but is gaining ground among academics who see the frequent error of end-times hysteria in our culture.

Anne Rice, the recently converted Vampire horror fiction writer and author of a novel series, Christ the Lord, points out two important facts on preterism. A correct understanding of the biblical significance of the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD not only vanquishes crippling dispensationalism, but it also refutes the modernist conjecture that the New Testament was written late by non-eyewitnesses to Jesus.

When Jewish and Christian scholars begin to take this war seriously, when they begin to really study what happened during the terrible years of the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the revolts that continued in Palestine right up through Bar Kokhba, when they focus upon the persecution of Christians in Palestine by Jews; upon the civil war in Rome in the ‘60s which Kenneth L. Gentry so well describes in his work Before Jerusalem Fell; as well as the persecution of Jews in the Diaspora during this period – in sum, when all of this dark era is brought into the light of examination – Bible studies will change. Right now, scholars neglect or ignore the realities of this period. To some it seems a two-thousand-year-old embarrassment and I’m not sure I understand why. But I am convinced that the key to understanding the Gospels is that they were written before all this ever happened.

I understand the Star Trek XI movie as a prophetic landmark for the church pointing us toward a correct understanding of not just the book of Revelation, but of the entire New Testament. Let's look at how perfectly the Star Trek mythology dovetails with the following biblical truths.

As any Trekkie can tell you, Spock’s sacrificial death and resurrection in Star Trek II and III cast him as the perfect Christ figure. Not only does he save the crew of the Enterprise, but he also saves the entire Federation of Planets from a doomsday machine called “Genesis.” The project is intended to create new inhabitable worlds in a few days or weeks out of barren planets. However, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy sees it for what it really is.

[In the film, Star Trek II, Kirk, Spock and Bones have just viewed a proposal video for the Genesis Project]

MCCOY: Dear Lord, do you think we're intelligent enough to … suppose … what if this thing were used where life already exists?

SPOCK: It would destroy such life in favor of its new matrix.

MCCOY: Its new matrix? Do you have any idea what you're saying?

SPOCK: I was not attempting to evaluate its moral implications, Doctor. As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.

MCCOY: [Sarcastically] Not anymore. Now we can do both at the same time! According to myth, the earth was created in six days. Now watch out! Here comes Genesis. We'll do it for you in six minutes!

In Star Trek II, subtitled The Wrath of Khan, a genetically engineered super-villain named Khan captures Genesis and intends on using it to conquer the galaxy. The parallels between the biblical Genesis story here are all too obvious. Man, in his pride, succumbs to the desire to be like God by creating worlds. Then his adversary, the devil or Khan, manipulates man’s error in an attempt to rule the galaxy.

Ironically, Spock not only defeats “Genesis” by giving his life for the Enterprise, thus enabling the crew to destroy Khan, but later a newly created Genesis planet becomes the resting place of Spock’s body. Unknown to the crew of the Enterprise, Spock cannot remain dead on a planet that creates life out of non-life. In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, McCoy discovers that upon Spock’s death he has received Spock’s soul which was imparted to him upon his death through a mind meld – a Vulcan ritual of laying on of hands and transferring thoughts and emotions. Spock’s DNA is reassimilated on the Genesis planet well into this third installment and he is resurrected and reunited with the crew. The Christian allegory here is obvious.



Fast forward to Star Trek XI, a movie that is all the more satisfying because the background mythology of the series alluded to elsewhere is spelled out clearly. While the story line is comprehensible to the newbie, Star Trek fans will see references to the mythology of the series in every scene, which makes it enjoyable on a deeper level.

Spock has been working as an ambassador toward universal peace among the planets for many decades. He attempts unification between his home world, Vulcan, and their ancestral enemies the offshoot race of the Romulans. Many years after this (Vulcans live much longer than humans you must know, it’s part of the mythology) it is discovered that a giant supernova threatens to destroy a large part of the inhabitable galaxy. Equipped with a substance called “red matter,” Spock attempts to cause the supernova to collapse on itself transforming the stellar phenomenon into a black hole. In the process the Romulan home world is destroyed.

A Romulan miner named “Nero” escapes death because he captains a vast starship apparently outfitted to drill, pulverize and process planetary matter and asteroids. He travels back into the past through this black hole. Nero resolves to eliminate the Federation by killing its greatest starship captain, James T. Kirk, before he could take command of the Enterprise. Kirk's best friend, Spock, tries to undo the damage caused by Nero by following him through time. Arriving 25 years later than Nero due to the time distortion, Nero is waiting for Spock. Rather than killing Spock, he imprisons him on an ice planet close to Vulcan. Spock is forced to watch the death of his own home world in this alternate universe. (Star Trek is no stranger to the time paradox theme as introduced in what is arguably the best episode, “City on the Edge of Forever.”) Nero then plans to use “red matter” to destroy the worlds that make up the Federation over 100 years prior to his own planet's destruction in order to alter the future.

Star Trek XI’s theme becomes the “Wrath of Nero.” Or as the King James version of the Bible has it:

And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ (Revelation 12:17).

This war between the dragon and the woman becomes the mythic theme of Star Trek XI. In the plot of the film, there are several striking parallels. First, the elder Spock watches his mother killed and then he is forced to contend with the war of Nero against the Federation, the prime targets being the younger versions of Spock and Kirk.

It is important to understand here that the “woman” of Revelation 12 is not singularly Mary the Mother of God, but Israel and later “New Covenant Israel” or the church. In Revelation chapter 13, a new character is introduced, “a beast arose up out of the sea.” This is the Roman Caesar Nero who actually did kill the “seed of the woman,” the founders of the Christian church, in large numbers. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in about 116 AD, records that Nero sought to use the Christians as the scapegoat for a great fire that consumed much of Rome on the night of July 18th, 64 AD:

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed (Annals 15.44).

Writing about 20 years earlier (c. 96 AD), the Roman bishop Clement records that Peter and Paul were among the list of martyrs of his “own generation.” Clement is thought by many to be an eyewitness to the martyrdoms of the Apostles and other Christians in the arena under Nero from 64 to 67 AD.

But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labors and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience (1 Clement 5).

Star Trek’s villain Nero seeks first to punish Spock by destroying his home planet, but his family escapes except for his mother, an earth woman named Amanda. Spock is half Vulcan and half human and this too fits into the Christ myth that is developed throughout the Star Trek canon. Nero then seeks to kill “the remnant of the woman’s seed,” the young Spock and the crew of the Enterprise.

Likewise, Caesar Nero after proclaiming himself a god, was unable to countenance the existence of a growing Christian movement that placed a man from Palestine above his own authority. In his great wrath, Nero destroys the Apostles, but cannot destroy the church after three-and-a half years of bloody persecution. The Beast is said to “make war with the saints and to overcome them” (Rev. 13:7). He is said to conduct such blasphemous warfare for a specific period of time: 42 months (Rev. 13:5).

As a consequence, Nero commits suicide stabbing himself in the neck with his own sword. The Beast not only slays by the sword, but ultimately is to die of a sword wound. “He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity: he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints” (Rev.13:10). Finally, we see the Beast “cast into a lake of fire” at the end of John’s prophecy (Revelation 20:10). Star Trek’s Nero meets a similar end as he too dies in a conflagration.

As in any allegory, the weakness is found when we begin to stretch it too far. Obviously the time travel element and having two Spocks complicates “the seed of the woman” analogy a bit – or perhaps makes it more interesting. However, I have made it my purpose here to note the biblical parallels between Star Trek XI and the biblical story of the woman, the child, the dragon and the beast and to point out how the history of Nero can be understood to support the preterist interpretation of biblical prophecy.

Countering Bible Cynicism

My ongoing conversation with Bible skeptics has taught me a few things.

The first and foremost is that most aren't skeptics in the true sense. A skeptic is one who calls accepted knowledge into question or tries to find alternative theories to explain the data on hand. Christians need to have a healthy skepticism toward the Bible, not in order to disprove it as God's Word, but to challenge faulty interpretations and to test how well we are able to defend the integrity of scripture. While I've had a few good conversations with skeptics that were rational, what I've found most often is blatant cynicism.

Cynicism is characterized by a mistrust or mockery of established conventions. The cynic doesn't use inquiry or constructive argument, but mainly sarcasm, verbal abuse and a host of logical fallacies. Oscar Wilde described a cynic as, "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." A cynic is one who wants to take the easy path toward being considered an intellectual without doing any of the heavy lifting. It's a philosophy of misdirection in which the cynic feels proud of his ability to debate merely because he is able to call everything into question without really contributing anything positive toward human knowledge. I wanted to here post three of the most common cynical statements I encounter and some of my brief responses to them.

1. Jesus never really existed. This was the thesis of Bruno Bauer in the 1890s who claimed that Jesus was not a historical person but was an amalgamation of pagan myths. Sir James Frazer followed in the 1920s with his book, The Golden Bough. Although Frazer did not doubt Jesus was a real person, he tried to match many of the Gospel stories with pagan myths showing that the New Testament stories about Jesus had no basis in history. The problem with the Jesus Myth hypothesis is that it was almost universally rejected by scholars soon after it appeared.

When I first encountered this crackpot hypothesis, I had a several months' long debate on my discussion board, which you can see here:

http://www.forerunner.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31

Rather than run over a lot of old ground each time I get this objection, I simply offer two challenges to the Jesus Mythist.

1. Can you name a single writer prior to the 1800s who claimed Jesus never existed?
2. Can you name even five Ph.D.s teaching history at the university level who claim Jesus never existed?

If they can't offer names, I won't continue the conversation. One recently called my tactic "hypocrasy" (sic) because I am a creationist and creationism has been disproved by modern science. What amazes me here is that he fails to see the difference. There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of Ph.D.s teaching science who are creationists. We are a minority, but creationism isn't a position that has no credible proponents.

What I usually find when I challenge these young unthinking postmodernists is that they don't really understand the meaning of their thesis. They either confuse the Mythist position with that of Historical Criticism -- that Jesus was a mere man. Or they simply haven't thought the position through, but are driven by an emotional desire to prove Christianity wrong. In very few cases are Jesus Mythists willing to admit that their hypothesis isn't based on any historical testimony or documentary data. What they do instead is to change the subject to dozens of other objections. It's hit-and-run atheist activism. I encourage those who want to be involved with apologetics not to waste time with people who do not want to argue through their position and answer hard questions.

2. The New Testament was not written until well after the death of Jesus. I've even heard a few who are convinced that the New Testament was not written for "hundreds of years" after Jesus. Just a brief bit of background on this position should be considered. In the 1800s, it was the German Higher Critics who first began to push the proposed date of the New Testament into the second century -- even to the later decades. Some were motivated by anti-Semitism. The simply couldn't fathom the idea of first century Jews founding the religion of Europe. The late dating was not based on documentary evidence or historical testimony. Instead their conjecture was founded on form criticism and source criticism -- the idea being that the critic could read into the text what type of person wrote the book, when it was written, and which sources (often non-extant "phantom" documents) the author used.

Reading the Higher Critics or their modern counterparts is aggravating because they will completely dismiss all documentary evidence and historical testimony out of hand. Documentary evidence is in the form of actual manuscripts and fragments of the New Testament. Historical testimony is the records left by first and second century church fathers who quoted from and left commentary on the New Testament.

First, in the late 1800s up to this day there have been about 100 manuscript fragments discovered that date from the 115 to 300 AD. The earliest manuscript is a copy of the Gospel of John called the Ryland's fragment. Since this is considered to be at least a copy of a copy, and John is thought to be the last Gospel written, this puts the Gospels squarely in the first century. The latest possible date for the three synoptic Gospels according to the data then is the 70s and 80s. But we should stress this is the latest possible date. Nothing precludes an earlier date.

Second, the universal testimony of the church fathers beginning with Clement of Rome in the first century has the bulk of the New Testament written by the named authors prior to 70 AD. Some have the earliest Gospel being written by 40 AD. A skeptic may doubt this and certainly liberal scholars want to prefer the later dates of the 70s and 80s, however, there is no testimony from the ealry centuries that even hints at a later date for any of the books of the New Testament. The best the cynic has is an argument from silence. Since conservatives can't prove conculsively a specific date for each book, then the dates must be later. Of course, this is not logical.

The weakness of the cynic's position is that he believes the argument from silence "proves" something when in fact, in studying historical events you can seldom prove a negative. The true skeptic ought to admit that the worst case scenario is that we cannot know for certain the exact date of the New Testaments -- we must make educated guesses.

3. The Bible isn't true because people don't rise from the dead. The belief in miracles such as the resurrection can have a rational basis. However the atheist is irrational in that he wants to interpret the world from a purely naturalistic viewpoint. Yet naturalism has no explanation as to how the universe could have been formed from nothing or to how the beginning of a universe created out chaos and random order, can result in a universe of increasing complexity and order. To hold to a faith that has no basis in collected data is irrational.

On the other hand, Christianity is rational. Jesus Christ the Living Word (or the LOGOS) is the unifying principle of all human knowledge and is the basis for all rational thought. Christianity does not deny scientific and rational thought. All philosophy up until the time of Immanuel Kant was rational in nature. Western philosophy was divided into two groups -- Christian and Greek pagan. But both groups were looking for a “unifying principle” that would unite the study of both the seen material and the unseen spiritual worlds. To Christians, this unifying principle was Christ, since the LOGOS was both a linguistic (Biblical literature) and logical (the God-man Jesus Christ as a real historical teacher) answer to the problem of the natural/spiritual dichotomy.

When Immanuel Kant wrote Critique of Pure Reason, he rejected the idea that there can be a principle that unites all fields of knowledge. He was actually arguing for an “irrational” system that tells us that we must forever accept a total dichotomy between the visible and invisible worlds. Modern philosophy and liberal theology now sees the two worlds (the noumenal world and the phenomenal world) as two airtight compartments. If the spiritual world exists, we cannot know anything about it through rational thought according to Kant.

Georg Hegel came along soon after and proposed that all truth is a synthesis between thesis and antithesis. That is, there are no objective truths, just what we end up agreeing upon after argument and debate. In fact, we make up new truths in the process. Thus Kant and Hegel together ended up creating an irrational basis for human philosophy that can never explain how the universe fits together as a whole. Even in the world of science, history, education, literature, and politics, people now see a divided universe that exists in many small compartments, but cannot be understood as a whole. People seek to understand the "many" while denying the "one."

Hitler was simply echoing Hegelian thought when he said: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” and “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think” and “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.”In other words, the “lie” becomes the new “truth” if most people will just believe it.

What Kant and Hegel did was to open the door to irrational thought in the form of existentialism and postmodernism. In fact, we are already well down the slippery slope to irrational philosophy.

What is irrational is the modern reliance on a Kantian, Hegelian dualistic view of the universe that excludes what we cannot measure scientifically as "irrational." The cynic has gone so far down the rabbit hole of existentialism, that he doesn’t even understand the irrationality Kantian and Hegelian thought. In the long run, his position isn’t a philosophical or religious problem at all. It’s a moral problem fueled by irrational passions.

Puritan Storm Rising!

Here is an experimental bumper for a video documentary on how the Reformed theology of the Puritans has influenced culture and politics. It's loosely related to the online publication, The Puritan Storm.

Why I am not an atheist

Evangelist Ray Comfort recently sensationalized the atheist blogosphere by saying he'd pay $20,000 to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for the opportunity to debate Dawkins.

Comfort's proposition is that atheists base their skepticism on their supposed intelligence, but in reality they are some of the most thoughtless people in the world. If you believe there is no God, then you believe, without any scientific proof, that the universe could have come into existence from nothing.

I've explained the impossibility of this from the pure standpoint of physical science in another blog post.

http://www.forerunner.com/blog/2008/09/why-does-universe-exist-answer-to.html

Even better is Chuck Missler's succinct explanation from his book, The Creator Beyond Time and Space:

The creationist's model begins with an infinitely intelligent, omnipotent, transcendent Creator who used intelligent design, expertise or know-how to create everything from the sub-atomic particles to giant redwood trees. Was it a miracle? Absolutely!

"In the beginning (time), God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter)" (Genesis 1:1).

The atheist's model begins with an even more impressive miracle - the appearance of all matter in the universe from nothing, by no one, and for no reason. A supernatural event. A miracle! However, the atheist does not believe in the outside or transcendent "First Cause" we call God. Therefore, the atheist has no "natural explanation" nor "supernatural explanation" for the origin of space-time and matter. Consequently, the atheistic scenario on the origin of the universe leaves us hanging in a totally dissatisfying position. He begins his model with a supernatural event. This supernatural event, however, is accomplished without a supernatural agent to perform it.

In short, I cannot be an atheist because to believe in the spontaneous appearance of the entire universe out of nothing makes no sense.

As a thinking person, I have to be some type of theist. I'll reserve for another post why only Christianity among the world's theistic religions has to be correct.

Here I want simply to point out that much of the postmodern atheist strategy is simple posturing. Dawkins routinely refuses to debate Christians because he wants to put forth the idea that debating theism would give it credibility. He simply wants to ridicule faith and portray any belief in the supernatural as impossible to reconcile with his superior intelligence. I saw an interview with Dawkins and the so-called "Rational Responders" in which they admitted that their entire strategy was riducule and abuse Christians, not giving theism the dignity of a public hearing. It's much easier to do guerilla tactics, hit-and-run, ridicule -- and other forms of diversion -- and never face the fact that everything that exists had to have an antecedent. The atheist never faces this existential paradox -- that something in the natural world can never come from nothing. The only answer to the existential paradox is a supernatural one.

At the very least, the atheist should admit that his belief in no God is as much a supernatural faith as is Christianity in that no known natural laws can account for an ex nihilo creation of the universe.

I have no doubt Dawkins is intelligent. However, Christians ought to view him as a useful idiot. His books and atheist activism are a good opportunity to expose the soft underbelly of post-modernism -- the retreat into pure emotion and subjectivity -- that is the entire undergirding for today's atheism. In fact, this atheist's refusal to engage in formal debate is the proof of this retreat from rationalism.

ABC News Poll: 92 Million Evangelical Christians in America

I was looking for some statistics on the number of self-professed evangelicals in America and I found this poll from June of last year:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/beliefnet_poll_010718.html

According to the poll, 83 percent of Americans describe themselves as Christian.

Of this number, 37 percent of all Christians describe themselves as born-again or evangelical; that includes nearly half of all Protestants (47 percent), as well as a small share (14 percent) of Catholics.

So assuming the current census numbers of just over 301 million, there are 250 million "Christians" in the United States and 92 million evangelicals.

Evangelicals are by definition people who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ; the inerrancy of scripture; and that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone.

If we include conservative Roman Catholics who don't describe themselves as "evangelical," but who nevertheless share our values, the number swells even larger -- perhaps more than 100 million or one-third of all Americans.

Consider that this voting block goes for the Republican presidential candidate by 70 to 80 percent in every election. Then consider that no presidential candidate has ever won with more than 70 million votes.

What we have is a sleeping giant among evangelical non-voters.

If conservative Christians want to capture the majority of the executive, congressional and judicial offices at the national level and in most states in the next four to six years, a simple strategy can be employed.

1. Promote the truth that voting is not only a privilege it is a duty.

Jesus taught: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." For too long, many Christians have taken this to mean that we are exempt from political involvement. "We belong to God and therefore our vote does not need to be rendered unto Caesar." Whether this is thought consciously or unconsciously, this is the attitude and the behavior. However, in a representative democracy, "Caesar" is "We the People." This means that we have the God mandated responsibility to represent ourselves by casting our vote. We cannot simply opt out of the process and say that we are exempt from rendering to Caesar since we belong to God. Evangelical Christians as a potential majority voting bloc are Caesar. In our democratic republic, Caesar -- "We the People" -- belongs to God!

2. Hold two national caucuses made up of prominent evangelical leaders every two years to endorse candidates.

The Conservative Christian Caucus could be called prior to the primaries in each election year to examine Democratic, Republican and Independent candidates according to a three pronged test.

* Pro-life and pro-family issues

* Domestic spending and tax reform

* Lessening size of the federal government and regulation

All candidates would be invited to give a short speech on their policy positions. Then each delegate would give each candidate a "yea or nay" on each area and votes would be tabulated with each candidate receiving a rating.

In each presidential primary cycle the evangelical vote is usually split between several candidates and what invariably happens is that the plurality ends up going to a moderate Republican who then disappoints conservative evangelicals by caving in on one or more of the three areas of our concern.

After the third or fourth primary, the Caucus would reconvene in order to unite behind a single candidate. The same process would be used as before, with the "winner" of the caucus publicized. In this way, evangelical voters would not be hoodwinked into thinking that they must support the "front runner" in order to win the presidency in the fall. The tail will no longer wag the dog. The front runner would become the candidate we unite behind.

In every two year congressional election, these caucuses might occur on the state and district level as well to evaluate conservative candidates.

A national caucus would be also be held during the mid-term election cycle in order to evaluate the performance of the sitting president and to evaluate some important senatorial and congressional races.

Waking The Sleeping Giant

Let's face it. Gulliver has been held captive by the Lilliputians for too long. We have been told we can't organize or risk losing our 501(c)3 status. But a majority of conservatives in power (not just "Republicans in name only") would have the power to abolish the IRS with one stroke of the pen. We could revert to a "fair tax" -- a national sales tax -- that would make losing 501(c)3 status moot.

(And for those church and ministry leaders who fear the losing the motivating factor of having tax exempt donations on donors 1040 "Schedule A" forms, please realize that donations would still be tax exempt under a "fair tax" in that we would not pay any income tax or sales tax on these donations!)

We therefore need to complete steps one and two and then revert to step one in an effort to motivate all evangelical voters to participate in the primaries and the general election. It is not even necessary at this point to educate evangelicals how to vote, but to get them to vote. This huge voting bloc is going to generally fall along an 80/20 ratio and has the ability to tilt any election if enough vote. A few strategies can be employed.

1. Encourage pastors and priests to give short election day sermons in which the Christian duty to vote is expounded upon.

2. Distribute absentee ballots to church members with simple easy to explain instructions on how to use them. Absentee ballots are far more effective than "voter guide" because it requires the individual to examine his or her choices prior to election day. Absentee ballots might be coupled with voter guides, but might be better received than voter guides among pastors and church elders who are squeamish about having a "Christian Coalition Voter Guide" available among the church's "Gospel" literature.

3. Conduct frequent voter registrations in churches prior to the primaries, after Easter Day service and prior to the general elections.

These two strategies of uniting behind a single candidate through local, state and national caucuses and mobilizing the "sleeping giant" can have a huge effect in restoring some moral sanity to the politics and culture of our nation.

The Forerunner YouTube Channel hits the "one million video views" and "one thousand subscribers" mark.

As of this week, The Forerunner YouTube Channel surpassed the "one million video views" and "one thousand subscribers" mark.

If you operate a YouTube channel, you know that the beginning is slow going, but as the number of videos posted and number of subscribers increases the total numbers begin to snowball.

This is only a drop in the bucket compared to YouTube users who have gone viral. The all time favorite, of course, is "The Evolution of Dance" with the unlikely number of over 117,000,000 views (as of this posting Avril Lavigne has pulled slightly ahead). My most popular video to date is the first one I posted on YouTube in November of 1996 and in fact the first video I ever made. Abortion Clinic 911 Calls has a mere 223,000 views, which is .2 percent of some of the most "viral" videos.

Suffice it to say, competing with pop stars' latest music videos and such silliness as "Charlie bit my finger" is a huge task. That is not to say it cannot be done. A friend of mine hit the 2.5 million mark with a video about Barack Obama and late term abortion: I Invented the Internet (Ep. 4: Kill and Destroy).

Another guy I know makes several hundred dollars a month just from Google Adsense with videos produced by other people (including a few of mine) that he got permission to use. This is with a 5000 subscriber base.

Doing some simple math comparing our numbers, I am guessing that a monetized video with hundreds of millions of views is going to make its producer a few thousand dollars a month -- maybe tens of thousands -- for doing nothing beyond possessing the rights to the video. Strangely, several of the most popular YouTube videos are not monetized -- at least not with the YouTube/Adsense partnership program.

The future of all video is on-line channels that make their money from ad placement. I expect it will expand far beyond YouTube, but this is "Life After Television."

Were flying reptiles too large to fly?

The following is from the U.K. Telegraph:

They carried away Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC and were ferocious in the Jurassic Park series of films.

But now it seems pterodactyls, the terror of the prehistoric skies, may have struggled to get off the ground.

The new research claims that the ancient reptiles, which could grow to the size of small aeroplanes, were too heavy to fly -- even with their massive wings.

The problem, according to a leading scientist, is that they could not flap fast enough to create the thrust to keep their enormous bulk airborne.

This is a well-known problem for paleontologists, that recently made the "news" again. Birds can fly because they have lighter bones than most mammals and are light enough to create the momentum to take off from the earth with their wings. Flying reptiles, which were related to but in a different class than dinosaurs, were so massive that the mechanics of pterosaur flight are not completely understood. But it is equally unlikely that this group of animals was not capable of powered flight.

The problem vanishes if it is proposed that the atmosphere at this time had a higher barometric pressure, being several times thicker or more "soupy" than it is today. In fact, this helps to explain the hugeness of nature in general -- how the atmosphere could support giant ferns, plants, trees, insects, dinosaurs, and of course, pterosaurs -- during this era.

Implications For Radiometric Dating

The dinosaur era -- spanning 300 million years from 350 to 50 million years ago, the Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous -- commenced with an explosion of huge and prolific plant forms. At the start of the Triassic period coal is noticeable by its absence throughout the world. This is known as the "coal gap." Most of the coal and fossil fuel of the planet is thought to have been formed after the beginning of the Triassic period. During this era, the entire planet existed in a tropical climate. Huge lush rain forests and swamps supported huge insect and animal forms. It is further thought that warm blooded animals did not come on the scene until the planet cooled.

But this theory of a dense atmosphere planet has huge implications for radiometric dating models. Carbon-14 dating relies on the presupposition that the amount of radiation entering the earth's atmosphere has been fairly constant over the time period being studied. Potassium-argon dating and uranium-lead dating is thought to be more stable than this and the formation of these isotopes are not dependent on cosmic rays. However, it is known that the effect of cosmic rays bombarding these isotopes can produce an an acceleration or deceleration of decay.

If we accept the "super-pressure tropical atmosphere hypothesis" there would be a significantly lower amount of radioactive material and a higher rate of radioactive decay since the sun’s radiation was hindered by the higher moisture environment of the earth’s protective shield. The resulting radiometric dating models would yield dates much higher than the actual age if this is not taken into account.

The mistake is to assume that the amount of cosmic radiation entering the earth’s atmosphere has been constant since the age of dinosaurs. This would have its most immediate effect on Carbon-14 dating, which would affect mainly recent archaeological finds now dated at less than 70,000 years. For the purpose of dating flying reptile fossils, potassium argon and uranium-lead dating is used. The effect of the sun on these radioacative isotopes is more complicated to describe, but the interaction of cosmic rays with the earth's magnetic field has been shown to have an effect on the enrichment and rate of decay of potassium-argon and uranium-lead.

Without assuming the Genesis pre-flood earth model proposed by many creationists, I'd like to see some paleontologists do a recalibrated study of fossils based on various atmosphere models that differ from the constant model now assumed. The hypothesis ought to be considered that the dinosaur era was closer to us in time than is now proposed.