June 1997

Bible distortion

Thank you so very much for the article, 'How long were the days of Genesis 1?' from Creation magazine 19(1):23.

Please warn readers to check Genesis 1 before purchasing any so called 'New Translation'. One released in 1996 leaves out the 'evening and morning' before all of the 6 days of creation. In addition most of the 'after its kind' are left out and the one included is altered. Thus it makes it very hard to argue for a literal six day creation and against evolutionary processes from this 'altered' form of Genesis 1. I don't see how an honest person could call this a translation when it leaves out thoughts/phrases from the original. Many well-known evangelical leaders are promoting this so-called 'New Translation', and I am very concerned for new believers and those lacking discernment.

Virginia Schaeffer,
Indianapolis,
USA.

Evangelism

I am thrilled to renew my subscription to your Creation magazine, and to report that my husband tells me it was the major factor in his salvation. (I am renewing the magazine at his request!) God bless.

S. Westerik,
Western Australia.

Bible proofs

I appreciate your magazine and the work your team does in spreading God's Word very much.

I know you teach that the Bible is the infallible, inerrant Word of God and that this truth is independent of whether there is any supporting evidence or not. It is wonderful that there is so much evidence that agrees with (not confirms), what the Bible teaches but it would be very dangerous to put our faith in the Bible only because of such evid-ence. After all, 'faith is being sure of what we hope for and cert-ain of what we do not see' (Hebrews 11:1).

If a person's faith is dependent on something outside the Bible, what happens to that person's faith when something which 'proved' the Bible is found to be incorrect?

Kay Homewood,
New South Wales,
Australia.

[Agreed. Our whole thrust (see, e.g. the Answers in Genesis videos, is to build our thinking upon the Bible, since it is the Word of God who was there, knows everything, and does not lie. — Ed.]

Pope’s appendix

I noted the Pope's recent declaration that ‘evolution is more than a hypothesis’ came a few weeks after he had his appendix removed after recurring inflammation.

Most evolutionary-trained doctors and nurses would tell patients that the human appendix is a useless evolutionary leftover, and we are better off without it.

Well known British biologist John Maynard-Smith states he became convinced of evolutionary theory after nearly dying from a burst appendix as a teenager.¹ He concluded that the human appendix must be a biological mistake that a Creator would never make, so it had to be an evolutionary leftover.

This is an erroneous view, as the appendix has now been demonstrated to have a multitude of functions .²

It seems likely the Pope has fallen for such a mistaken line of reas-oning, which defames the nature of God.

1. BBC program 'Seven Wonders'.
2. Bergman and Howe, Vestigial Organs are Fully Functional, CRS Books, Indiana, pp. 43—47. Also CEN Technical Journal 3:31—38, 1988.
   

Cameron Horn,
New South Wales,
Australia.