(18) What science knows & doesn't know
Vern Peterman · Feb 12, 2006
Apologetics, No. 19
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262343511946

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, what we're going to do here is take a look at this subject, you know, what does science know? What can science tell us? There has been an interesting drift over recent centuries, and that is at first to have this utmost admiration for science as if science could tell us everything in the world, and then some. And then in recent decades, a drift somewhat back the other direction. where a skepticism about science in some respects and among some an anti-science viewpoint and beyond that also the postmodern idea ultimately says that you can't know anything in as truth with the capital T that ultimately all you can know is the relative degrees of certainty based within your own cultural understanding of things, which can never be finally validated. How about that? So it's the ultimate, and we're not sure, we don't know, and I can't tell you why. Now, as we look at this, what we'll do, and we'll pace through this, most of the slides will correspond to what you have there.

This is one we've showed several times before, and I think it's real indicative, because these are the five areas that Scripture says that God has revealed Himself. The most specific of those revelations are in Scripture and in Jesus Christ, and notice that for each one of those five areas we have what? To testify to it, Scripture. Scripture ends up being the focal point of those five areas of revelation. We know about the first three because of Scripture. We know about Scripture because of Scripture's own claims for itself, and we know about Jesus Christ because of what Scripture says of Him.

So, with that, we're going to look here and notice that this is general revelation. In other words, these are areas where God has revealed Himself, but there's not a specificity. Example, nature. What do we know about God from nature? Pardon? The beauty of it, the grandeur of it. Sure, what else? The design. We see the design. We see from Psalm 19, pardon? The complexity of it. Yeah. Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God.

If we look at the Romans 1.18-20 passage, We see his eternal power and deity are revealed in scripture.

There are things, excuse me, in nature. There are things that we can see in nature that tell us something about God. But would you know from just looking at nature that Christ died on the cross and was buried and rose again on the third day, dying for your sins and raising to give you new life? Would you know that just from nature? Not really. There are some interesting parallels here and there. People will use kind of analogies of things like a cocoon and that sort of thing.

But ultimately, there isn't the specificity except through scripture. And that's special revelation is scripture in Jesus Christ. These are special in the sense they're very specific. They're extensive in what's revealed to us. OK. Ultimately, scripture records for us the content of the special revelation in writing. Scripture gives us God's intents and purposes.

And I think that's one of the difficulties that people just look at nature, you may have a difficulty understanding what did God have in mind, wouldn't you? You have a hard time looking at it. And that's one of the reasons why if you look at world religions, which we'll start looking at in a couple of weeks, if you look at world religions, everything that man concocts is kind of all over the place. and there's a lot of variation to it, because nature itself doesn't give us the whole story. And if they don't have the specific revelation from God, then it's any man's guess, and that's about what it comes to.

With this insight, we can determine what God's, what message God intended and purpose God has for the general revelation through nature. In other words, here are the scientists, they're looking at nature, But even the scientists don't have the understanding what did God intend without Scripture.

Scripture is the test of validity of all other claims to truth. And that's obviously from the Christian standpoint, but we think we stand on solid ground in that claim. That Scripture is the ultimate evaluator, the acid test, if you will. General revelation is truth that is about God, And God's existence and some aspects of his character and actions on behalf of humans are the biblical limits of general revelation. In other words, general revelation, if we look at what does scripture say about it, there are certain limits to what it can tell us. It can tell us some things, but that is limited. General revelation is truth that is universally available to human beings in regards to the culture, technology, and time.

Here's David writing Psalm 19, verse 4. Now David was not an ignorant person, but notice the way he puts it, that the heavens are declaring the glory of God, as he puts it down that from the beginning, and we'll take a look at this a little more closely, from the beginning, so people of all kinds of cultural backgrounds can look at general revelation and reach that conclusion, science is not needed to reach the conclusions that general revelation provides. Science is limited to a specific range of culture, technology, and time. Here, for example, here's the creation back at the beginning. Here's David who wrote Psalm 19 about 3,000 years ago.

Here's modern science. So modern science time-wise, just a rough number, what percentage of all human time has science involved? Yeah if you were to guess somewhere around 10% that that's probably a reasonable number. And there's a small percentage comparatively speaking. Most of human time on planet Earth has not involved science. So how much of a human, excuse me, oh okay. How much of human history of people had access to modern science? Just this little tiny amount. For how much of human history of people had access to general revelation? How long?

Yeah, all of it. Their line has gone out, and this is in reference to this Psalm 19 here. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their utterance to the end of the world. Everywhere. It's universal, isn't it? So general revelation of God through nature has been around, and that was written about 1000 BC. David could write that the, notice he wrote in the past tense, right? So at 1000 BC, 3000 years ago, he could write then that it was already gone out.

I'm sorry, say that again. Yeah, I think ultimately they have to admit that it is. Let me make sure I understand your question. Maybe you could elaborate. Oh yes, yeah. It is based on, and I think we'll take a look at it here shortly, it's based on some specific cultural assumptions. It's interesting, when I was taking Western Civilization in college, for ancient Western Civilization, they said, your entire grade is going to be based on one question.

Why were the Greeks not able to invent modern science? And it was aspects of their culture that basically limited them. And to a great extent, you know how scientists go and test something? They'll repeat and repeat and repeat until they tested something? To the Greek mind, doing something like that was only slave work. And so it was beneath them and they wouldn't test it. So they failed to step into modern science in part just because of that cultural assumption. They wouldn't test and test and test things. So you could sit there and speculate and hypothesize, but it wouldn't go any further.

Here's another one, Romans 1, 18 through 20, for since when? The creation of the world. So David said, At his time, 3,000 years ago, it was past tense. Now we have something even more specific, since the very beginning of the creation of the world. So, general revelation has gone out since the creation of the world. David could write past tense about it 3,000 years ago. All through human time, general revelation has been made available to man. Okay? Make sense? Yeah, Art?

What's the difference between general revelation Okay, we made the distinction in the prior sheet, and I think you've got it on your handout there. The first three categories that begin with nature, I think we've got nature, providence, and conscience, I think are the three categories we have there. Those three categories reveal something about God, but are not extensive or very specific.

And scripture attests to those general revelations, But a person can't know what's God's intent about things. A person can't know what did Jesus Christ accomplish. You know, that God, for example, is infinitely holy is hard to discern just from looking at the things that we have in general revelation. Special revelation, which consists of Scripture and the person of Jesus Christ, those are specifics and those are more extensive knowledge. that reveal God's character and intents and plans, and even the understanding of man.

Our own human understanding of ourselves? Not very good. You can have modern psychology, and it's interesting, what they have done is essentially do a very good job, sometimes down to the fifth decimal point, of telling you, here is what the sin nature looks like. But they can't tell you that this is the way it is because man is separated from the life of God. They can't tell you that. Scripture does. Look at the physical extent.

Even if we say that modern science has been around for the last, and we'll use the figure that was put out there, roughly 10% of human time, even if we allow that, has that been the case all over the globe? Has everybody throughout even that time that science has been in existence, been exposed to modern science? On your head shakes, no. Can you give me some example people who have not been exposed to modern science, even in our modern era?

Okay, here's the Alcas, who basically up until the time I was, you know, a little guy, had really never even seen anything like this. Yeah, they had no idea that such a thing existed. I was just reading that this last week, they found an island where they had unknown species. This is over in the Western Pacific, unknown species being discovered. There are places that are even now just being discovered in places where science has just not had the inroads, even now. If you were to go back a hundred years ago, the area geographically that science would cover would be even smaller.

So science should not be put on an equal sign with general revelation. The time that science has been around, the geographic extent that science has, doesn't equate with what we saw in Romans 1 since the beginning of creation. It doesn't equate with what David could write in Israel 3,000 years ago that had already gone out, past tense.

So science is very limited. And here's where in part comes to the question that Marilyn had. Science is culturally based. It is only in a culture that is able to be exposed to it. and somehow grab hold of the techniques and technology and perspective and method of science that science has applicability. So it's important not to just say, you know, science equals general revelation. They're not the same. Science is very limited as to time and geographic extent. So how much of the globe do people have access to modern science? For how long? Not so much. Now, here's another thing.

General revelation is, this is Romans 118, truth that the unbeliever suppresses within himself. Truth that the unbeliever suppresses within himself. General revelation about God is something that the unbeliever looks at and says, not me, I'm not going for this. Pushes it away, pushes it down. Is the same true of science? I think the answer is no. Do you find unbelievers suppressing science in their own lives? Now, you could come up with individual personal examples of where somebody suppressed science, but it's not of the same magnitude. Let me give you a for instance. Scientists have concluded that Smoking five packs a day is really bad for your health. Does that make every five pack a day smoker stop? No. Okay.

So, so that way one example, you could look at it and here's scientists conclude something and the individual suppresses it, but that's not the same order of magnitude issue, nor does it have the same extent and consistency throughout all humankind as does the suppression of general revelation.

The unbeliever does not want to receive this truth. He will even use science if he has to, to try to suppress it. Now, wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness because people don't believe that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. They don't want to hear that.

Is that a problem? It doesn't have the personal and eternal consequences for them in a relationship with God. Therefore, most people aren't going to be disturbed if you come to them and say, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Do you ever run across any 32 degree Fahrenheit water freezing atheists? No, absolutely not! We'll form a society, I'll sue! They don't do that. Okay? That doesn't bother them any. It does bother them that you tell them that there is a God. It does bother them that you tell them that there is a God who is infinitely holy and will hold them morally and spiritually responsible. That bothers them.

Okay? Or, people don't believe that the earth is an oblate spheroid. A lot of people don't even know what that means, but anyway. It sure doesn't bother you, does it? Right? And it probably doesn't bother your neighbor. You've never had a neighbor come over to your house knocking on a door and said, boy, I can't believe in this oblate spheroid stuff. It doesn't bother them. They don't think about it. They don't repress it. It doesn't make them lie awake at night, and they don't form societies and associations and have meetings over it.

Yes? Well, you're right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, there is a certain amount of skepticism there that's appropriate, just because you have a bunch of formulas and that sort of thing. So they're not worried about that other than maybe you are. But anyway, science isn't general revelation and it isn't special revelation. Now, this is something important to get in mind, because the truth is there's a whole bunch of Christian colleges across the country that are real busy trying to do their science stuff as if science was general revelation. and they put science on par with scripture. A mistake, because scripture doesn't allow that connection.

Have you ever heard the phrase, all truth is God's truth? Ever hear that? The last roughly 20 years, that phrase has been carried about through a lot of Christian colleges and even into seminaries. I even heard it quoted from a church down in Castle Rock.

It's taught pretty much across the board as a dictum, but the truth is, truth with a capital T, is that scripture does not equate science and its conclusions with general revelation. And so, false assumption there, and what that false assumption has done is, yesterday afternoon I was over at Denver Seminary Bookstore, and you go over to the bookstore, and about half the Books that are on sale for the classes are just secular psychology.

Why? All truth is God's truth. They've taken that and assumed, well, if it comes out of science, then that must be on par with the Bible. And now they've put an equals sign in there, science equals general revelation. Scripture doesn't make that connection. Science does not have the characteristics that qualify it as biblically based general revelation. It doesn't have the extent of time, it doesn't have the geographic extent, and it doesn't have the requirement of culture that science needs in order for man to receive that general revelation. You can take a person who has not been educated in schools, you can take a person who doesn't know how to read and write, doesn't know how to do math, and they can still look at the heavens. And it's saying the heavens declare the glory of God, even if they can't quite figure out the formulas.

Science is often conducted and reported by those who are currently suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. That would be another reason that I would say you can't make an equal sign. Here you have these scientists. They are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. Some of them are avowedly Atheist or agnostic, they do indeed suppress the truth and unrighteousness and yet pursue science with great passion.

Why? It's because science does not equal general revelation. They're not the same. Yes? What we will see is that it is supportive of, yes, you're quite correct. And we'll see a little bit more on that in a bit. Science is supportive of general revelation. Science is supportive of because it has the ability to imply. It's been mentioned here the complexities of things. It's been mentioned here that things appear to have been designed. Those are implications from science. Can science come up with a law of theism? No. Science at best has the ability to imply, maybe even strongly imply, but it cannot make spiritual conclusions directly.

The closest it can do is come up with a strong implication about things in the spiritual realm, and only some of those. You can't put sin in a test tube. You can't put God's character, and the violation of which is the basis of sin, measure it with an oscilloscope. A micrometer just doesn't fit around it.

Now, science was founded by those who held basically Christian view of the physical realm. This was one of the interesting things, the Greeks fell short of inventing modern science, one of those reasons being that they would not, because it was beneath them, they would not involve themselves in repetitive scientific validation by testing. considering that below them and slaves work. So that was one of the limitations in their ability to do so.

The assumptions supporting science are fundamentally biblical. A lot of earlier scientists had some kind of a Christian viewpoint. Science is an investigative approach to a dynamic body of knowledge about the physical realm. Here's the scientific method.

You come up with a hypothesis. This, the Greeks were good at. You come up with a hypothesis. Now it's the next step that they fell short on. What do you do? You test it. That they didn't want to do. It was beneath them. Okay? If it passes, then you've got, with many passes, you've gone from a hypothesis to a theory. If it fails, you go back to the drawing board and cook up the next one. What the Greeks did is they just kept hypothesizing. with minimal testing because they didn't want to fall into slaves work.

This is science. After the theory is tested more and passes a great many times and the theory goes into law, a law can fail. We may come to a point in some laws, and it has happened, where we said this is a law and then eventually end up throwing it out. Okay, science was found by those who held a basically Christian view of the physical realm, so the assumptions supporting the science are fundamentally biblical. Science, however, can shed no direct light upon spiritual things. See what I say? Direct light. Implication? Yes.

I read one book where one scientist went through with his supercomputer and figured out what are the chances of evolving the simplest hypothetically. Now, this is not real. The simplest hypothetically viable life, one cell by chance, given the most ideal circumstances over millions of years. And he came up with this, you know, one in and then some incredible number of zeros behind it. I mean, just zeros that just filled pages and pages and pages. So that's one viable cell now. So what that says is based on his numbers, James Coppedge was the fellow's name. and he was from the Center for Probability Research in Biology.

And anyway, what he ended up concluding was, does that mean that life coming into existence by itself is impossible? Does it mean it's impossible? It is actually possible that life could come up by itself. Yes, that's what he concluded. It is possible.

Now, it's probably not one you'd want to count on. because the probability is so remote as to be ridiculous. When we look at these kinds of... Art, did you have a question? Modern medicine increasingly seeks to pursue scientific validation what they utilize and put into place, especially using double-blind placebo-controlled studies in order to avoid subjective evaluations and subjective responses. That's a quick summary, but yeah.

Here are the three main Christian assumptions of modern science. The universe is orderly because the God who made it is orderly, having biblically defined characteristics. He does not vary from what he has revealed of himself. God does not vary from what he has revealed from himself. He is constant.

One of the difficulties that the pagans had, and frankly the Greeks had difficulty with this when they believed in their gods, is their gods were capricious. What do we mean by that? We don't mean that they're like a Chevy Caprice. They were capricious. That is, their character, you couldn't tell from one moment to the next what they were going to do based on their character. They weren't particularly moral. They didn't require humans to be moral. They might do one thing and then do another. They could change form.

Here's Zeus, and he wishes to have an illicit affair, so he hides himself in a cloud, has the affair, and hides that from his wife. What does that tell you about Zeus' character and the character of his wife? She doesn't know everything. He's able to hide who he is. He's able to do something immoral, but presents himself to her as moral. I mean, it's very conflicted. And there was no way to tell from that what's going to happen. the idea of a Christian God who is the source of everything. And by the way, the Greek gods were not considered really the source of everything. Matter was what was eternal. And especially that idea continued in much of the Greek philosophy, including the philosophers that Paul encountered on Mars Hill in the Areopagus.

God is consistent God has a consistent character. The point that Randy brought up last week, it's not just that God created, but that He sustains with a consistent character. And that is the basis of natural law. And that's the assumption that the Christians who began modern science started with. There is a God who created everything, and that God has a character that is consistent, and the universe is separate from Him. unlike pantheism of Hinduism, there is a separateness between God and His creation, and that God sustains the universe, which we're shown in Colossians chapter 1, in Him all things consist. All things are held together. He is the one who continues to hold everything in existence. Why? Because He has this character that is changeless, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Now, the orderly universe can be known because the God who made it can be known. Ah, this is one other thing. Islam says that God is unknowable. Therefore, Islam was not the source of true modern science. Christianity was, because Christianity says that you can know God. Paul says what?

That I might know him. Ah, the thought was that here's this orderly universe, an orderly God who's revealed himself. The God who made it can be known. Therefore, I can know about the things that he has made. That was the assumption that went into their scientific investigation. Finally, there is a motive to discover the order since God himself is the creator.

So what's interesting here is general revelation, as we see in Psalm 19, as we see in Romans chapter 1, has certainly been revealed to us in scripture. We also know that there are ways in which it is nonspecific. What it reveals to us is profound, but not extensive in detail. There are many questions that it does not answer by itself. Science, on the other hand, though not You can't put an equal sign between science and general revelation.

Science, on the other hand, starts with Christian assumptions. And so there is a, and this is in reference in part to Marilyn's question, there is a cultural basis that in this case is really founded in Christian assumptions. There is a view of the world that was necessary to found modern science. It is not that scientists now continue those assumptions, but to begin it, those were the assumptions.

And even scientists who do not believe in God will admit that these were the assumptions that started things. Science isn't general revelation, and it isn't special revelation. Then what is it? What is this thing we've got called science? Science as a body of knowledge lacks the certainty and stability of scriptural truth.

If I look at Scriptural truth. Paul said to the Philippian jailer, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Is that universal truth for all time? Is that the real thing? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. Right? That's truth with a capital T. We can count on that. Science does not offer that. It can't. Here's an example.

Alfred Wegner, sorry I might pronounce that a little differently if I was of the right cultural background, but anyway, he is the one credited with producing the idea of continental drift. You've seen pictures of that where you see the continents and they, you know, started as one continent and then split up. And this explains, for example, the sort of fit between the continents across the Atlantic.

He proposed this idea back in, oh, it was roughly a hundred years ago and was fairly well laughed off. As a matter of fact, when I was still in elementary school, they were teaching the earth is dried fruit analogy for the explanation for the continents and the oceans, that the earth was sort of like a dried piece of fruit and as it kind of dried and hardened and cooled and things like that, that you end up with the shapes of the oceans and the continents. That's what they taught when I was in elementary school. I remember that. Then by the time I was in college, starting around 1970, they were teaching the continental drift theory. Here's this guy Wegener or Wagner from roughly a century ago presents the idea, ha ha ha ha ha, this is laughable. Still by the time when I'm in elementary school, ha ha ha ha ha, this is laughable.

Then by the time I'm starting college, oh this is the truth. You see, the character of science keeps shifting and changing, and that's the nature of it. Things go from hypothesis to theory to law. That's the sequence that we saw. And the steps between those is repeated testing. Pass, fail, pass, fail. If it passes, many passes, then we call it a theory. If it continues to pass even more, then it's called a law. Here's 1957. This is what I mentioned last week.

Nobel Prize in physics, these two scientists were awarded. They disproved the scientific law of parity that was held in subatomic physics. Nancy asked me, she said, could you explain that? I said, no. But anyway, it was a law in subatomic physics in the mid 1920s. When I was about five years old, you see, then these two scientists were given the Nobel Prize for disproving what had already been a law for several decades.

Now, science, unlike scripture, is a body of knowledge that is not revealed by God's willful intent and specific inspiration. Did God create everything that we see around us? Yes, scripture makes that clear, but God didn't say, I'm going to make this have this formula and these people will understand it because I've revealed it to them and I want them to know that.

As a matter of fact, I will give my Holy Spirit's assistance in their finding that out. I will have him lead them into finding the gravitational constant. Is that what we see? No. So the recipients are not promised the leading of the Holy Spirit towards truth. That's not the same is what we see for Christians. Here we see John 16, 13, but when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. Other references there in John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians point to the same truth.

What we find, however, is that that same promise is not made to scientists. Scientists are not promised the Holy Spirit's guidance and leading and direction, that they find the gravitational constant or the decipher all the mysteries of DNA or the existence of it. Ah, okay. Does it mean it's a futile effort? Very good question. What's the thought on that? Should we say, oh, forget that science stuff, it's useless. Yeah, Gail?

And following that issue, there were quite a few letters that came in that they printed from mother. And a lot of Christians were very attentive as an evolutionary plant, not only in the Bible, but magazines in general. And discontinued their subscription. And I wrote them a letter and I said, I thought they were doing a marvelous job with their photographs. What happens is science is able to give us some truth. We just need to recognize that it is not on par with the truth that has been revealed in scripture. It's not truth with a capital T. They're not eternal truths.

One of the things, you know, in my particular background as a civil engineer, what a civil engineer will do is say, you know, this is what science knows and I'll stamp these plans based on what science knows. If there's some chart where, you know, somebody's just kind of drawn a line out there and it's extrapolated where we really don't know anything, that's not science. You're going outside of the realm of what you know. So true science is actually humble. in that it knows this is the limits of my knowledge and true science understands that there may need to be some updates. One of the things that happened, you know, for instance, was there was a dome over a stadium that collapsed and it had all been done according to civil engineering principles and done correctly according to those principles. What they discovered was that there was some new principle involved in the structural analysis that they need to figure on that they hadn't seen before. So that's one thing is there's a continuing evolution of understanding and knowledge in science and things have to continually be refined. And it's not the same as the statements that we find in scripture that are absolute eternally true statements. God is love. God is spirit. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Those are items that are truth with a capital T. And so it's a different kind of knowledge.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, okay. Yeah, ultimately what you have, Because you're getting down to subatomic particle type. Sure. And the truth is that it has evolved and changed over time substantially. Pardon? Oh, actually what they've done is to refine and redefine what was originally thought. You know, they used to talk in terms of, you know, Here's these particles and they're orbiting and they start talking about shells where it was more of a, you know, here's a shell. I see a hand up here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And it used to be thought of a shell in terms of just, here's this round sphere. Now the path of those electrons has all sorts of odd shapes that were not originally conceived. Furthermore, they're defined probabilistically, that is that there's a certain random distribution within even the shapes that they've decided upon. Furthermore, they've got all sorts of other subatomic particles, you know, related to these, to the atomic, main atomic particles, you know, electron, neutron, proton, and they continue to find out more and more about that. Yeah, Randy?

The question about why would we be following science is obviously it's not like science has conditions. The real problem is not with the science, the problem is with the performance of what I call science. People who are embracing science as the absolute answer and being dogmatic about what we know Right.

Yeah, understanding the limits of what we know. You know, it seems from time to time, you know, you'll hear some announcement, you know, that this is earth shattering, you know, new discoveries. This is some new revolutionary discovery. But what they're giving you a clue about is what they've just discovered just blows the pants off of what we thought we knew before. And that's really the character of science. We go through and discover this and this and this. And then some discovery comes to light and we find we were wrong. Or some significant portion of our model, of our understanding needs to be corrected.

And the truth is, true scientists is humble. Being proud, I can tell you in the realm of engineering, being too proud will get you in big trouble. You're talking about falling buildings, falling bridges, and breaking dams, okay? So this is, yeah, being too proud, it gets you in serious trouble. and not just hypothetically, okay? There needs to be a humility about what do we know.

So people who start making grand statements about the universe and, you know, this happened and that happened out there some hundred million light years away, wait a minute. Yes, and what happens is it gets presented and really it should be truth with a capital T. It should be the word truth with a blur. Continuing to move and shift and change. Truth with a blur and the E at the end of truth is now crossed off.

Okay, yeah. Another question started to pop up here. Okay. Science cannot claim the work of the Holy Spirit and bring data to the point of propositional statements. What do I mean by a propositional statement? A statement of this is true. God is truth. God is love. Those are propositional statements. Those are statements of universal truth. All scripture is inspired by God.

Or, 2 Peter 1.21, but man moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Science can't claim that same truth. Is there a validity to it? Yes. But we must understand and be humble about it. Because humble is being honest. We have the physical realm and the spiritual realm. God is spirit and he's based within and defines the spiritual realm. The spiritual realm, outside of God himself, is by God's doing.

Are we spiritual beings? We are beings who have a spiritual and a physical aspect. Where did the spiritual side of us come from? Yeah, the physical and the spiritual side of man both came as a part of God's creation. The same can be said of angelic beings. They are spiritual beings that can express themselves in the physical realm. Here is something that is spiritual that is created by God, but it is not God Himself. So God is the origin and source of everything spiritual and everything physical. God has revealed himself to human beings, a uniquely physical and spiritual creation through general revelation and special revelation.

Here we are as a human being, and I'm going to kind of make a physical picture, I'm straddling a line, am I not? I am a human being and I live in the physical realm and I live in the spiritual realm. I straddled the line because I live in both realms. I live there because that's how God created me. I straddle both realms because of that. That's the way I've been made by God.

The content of general revelation is about God, but the content of special revelation reveals truth about both the spiritual realm and the physical realm. If you look at Scripture, Scripture makes spiritual statements, doesn't it? It is full of things revealed by God, about God, and about other truths in the spiritual realm. and in the physical realm. What are some statements that we find in Scripture that are true of the physical realm? Yes? Hey, first verse. Yeah. In the beginning, here is God, the uniquely spiritual being, the sole origin of everything spiritual and physical, and he created the heavens and the earth, the physical realm.

Objectively, science provides a method of investigation in a dynamic body of information of varying certainty, but only in the physical realm. At best, what it can do is imply things in the spiritual realm. It cannot make propositional statements truth with a capital T kind of statements about anything in the spiritual realm. In a truth, it can't make any truth with a lowercase t statements that are categorical in the spiritual realm. It can only make propositional statements, truth with a lowercase t in the physical realm, with implications sometimes in the spiritual realm. That's as far as science can go. In the spiritual realm, God's revelation provides absolute truths that tells us about the spiritual realm that science can't touch, it can only at best imply, and it makes absolute statements about things in the physical realm.

In the beginning, how did this get here? God made it. Is this going to be around forever? There will be a terminal point, and then this will be done. The whole physical realm, gone. God's gonna start over. How do we know that? He's revealed it. Not because science can tell us. Science can't address it. Only imply, but can't address it. Science implies a beginning and implies an end. I said last week the second law of thermodynamics says that the whole universe will die a heat death. That's what the ultimate description is. Scripture doesn't say it will get to that point.

But instead, God will hit the universe reset button. Okay? And everything here in the physical realm will disappear. And the Lord will begin again with a new creation that has been begun in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. We're out of time.

Lord, thank you. As we look here, boy, what marvelous things that we have been gifted to know and graced to know. And also by your mercy, we know. And we know from what you have revealed about your Son and who we are in Him. We thank you for that. In Jesus' name, Amen.