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Dr. Henry Morris
December 28, 2005
P.O. Box 2667
El Cajon CA 92021
Dear Dr. Morris,
Greetings to you from Augusta GA. We have been receiving the
Acts and Facts material from you folks for some time, and we
find it a breath of fresh air and a wonderful defense in these
perilous days of ever-darkening apostasy and ignorance. I am
happy for all the good defense of creationism you people have
maintained for years against the proponents of lies “whose
mouths must be stopped.”
I am writing regarding your recent article in Back to Genesis
entitled, “Replenishing the Earth.” In the article against the
“gap theory” you spend most of your time defending your subject
by correcting the word “replenish” in our Bible.
First of all, I would like to say that I don’t believe in the
“gap theory” either; but, I believe that trying to defend
creationism by correcting the Bible is like trying to sell a
level, square, compass or ruler to an engineer with the same
statement you made about your Bible – “I still believe it is the
best we have.” Do you think an engineer would buy it if it’s not
perfect? Neither do I believe an evolutionist will buy your
defense of creationism when you boast of a Bible, a measuring
rod (canon) that “may not be perfect, but it comes close.”
Dr. Morris, throughout your life, you have appealed to
scientific laws as absolute facts based on their perfection, and
now, will you defend creationism by apologizing for the Word of
God which is not perfect? What good is all your lifetime of
scientific research and positive scientific facts used in your
debates and discussions if the Bible you hold in your hands has
to be corrected, improved and replenished as to what is
evidently lacking? Have you not strained at a gnat and swallowed
a camel? There is no gap theory, only gaps in the Word of God?
Is that good news? I think I should rather have a gap theory
than a Bible full of gaps, wouldn’t you? Whose word should I
take for it? Yours? Are you not doing the very thing the
evolutionists do when they have the same “trust me” mentality?
“The KJV … is – in my judgment, at least – still the most
reliable accurate English translation.” What does your judgment
matter?
Dr. Morris, you are a scientist! You know there are absolute
perfect laws men rely on and appeal to every day – A perfect
circle has 360 degrees; a perfect straight line has 180 degrees;
a perfect right angle has 90 degrees; water freezes at 32
degrees every time perfectly and boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit
every time perfectly, unless some factor is changed. Will you
have a perfect science to judge things by, but an imperfect
Bible which must be judged and corrected? And then, will you
appeal to creationism because it is taught in the Bible? If your
Bible is deficient, then your creationism beliefs cannot be so
certain.
Webster’s 1828 dictionary gives the definition of “replenish” as
“1.To fill; to stock with numbers of abundance.” “2. To finish;
to complete.” How is that a “misleading translation”? I find
that the problem people have with words they don’t understand in
the Bible is not from mistaken Scripture, but mistaken people.
Words take on new meanings over the course of hundreds of years,
but it isn’t the word’s fault, but the people who have
mislearned and misused the word, or have learned it in an
altered sense. The
words “want” “conversation” “wine” in the Bible have different
meanings in today’s vocabulary, but the fault is not with the
words, but the people who are ignorant of their original
meanings.
Now, Dr. Morris, please consider that you have resorted to the
same thing that evolutionists do when they freely allow for
evolution every time they cannot explain something readily. You
don’t have to correct the Bible to condemn the gap theory, but
if you are going to appeal to the authority of the Bible to
expose the gap theory – once you breach that all-sufficient
authority, you make it more plausible that the gap theory and
everything else evolution maintains could be correct after all.
How can you defend yourself on any verse of Scripture that might
just be the opinion of translators of bygone centuries? Once a
brick mason affirms he has a level that’s not true, he can’t
have a wall that is. Once you allow for error in the Bible you
hold in your hand, you jeopardize every belief you try to base
on it. If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous
do?
Please allow me to postulate where I believe your error lies:
You are trying to make the Bible a product of science, when God
has removed all science from the picture and required that it be
received by faith. You cannot scientifically prove the Old
Testament books were written in Hebrew and the New Testament
books in Greek, because you don’t have the scientific data
necessary – the original manuscripts. You must assume, Dr.
Morris -- and that is not science. Are you not doing like the
evolutionists with their rocks and dating methods who also make
assumptions? How do you know Moses, who was fluent in Egyptian,
did not write one or all of the first five book originally in
Egyptian? You cannot answer scientifically -- you must make an
assumption based on the evidence you have. You are treating the
Bible as a specimen of science and leaving yourself and other
“Bible scholars” as the judges to determine its validity. That’s
the very thing the evolutionists are doing with rocks. So,
what’s wrong with them?
Dr. Morris, if your prevailing belief -- of getting back to the
unseen originals by constructing the Bible with all the
available scientific evidence, and using yourself as the judge,
while rejecting the absolute Word of God that he has
miraculously preserved in English and blessed these four hundred
years – I say, if you are right to use scientific evidence to
construct the Bible, why can’t evolutionists be right to use
their scientific evidence to construct the origins of life? You
creationists will give the answer that God made the world with
the appearance of age, and that the evolutionists must use more
than a rock to prove origins, but the Word. Now let me apply
your own principles to show your inconsistencies: Why can’t I
say that God has chosen to preserve his Word in a way that must
be taken by Faith and not proved by science?
Science must have scholarship, but God has chosen throughout
history to choose simple, ignorant, unlearned men to convey
inspired Scriptures – those two ideas are at enmity with one
another. Jude does not say that we are to contend for the faith
once given to the scholars, but the faith once given to the
saints. I trust my Bible because it speaks for itself, not
because I am convinced of the credentials of the KJ translators.
One is not obligated to check the history of a knife in order
for it to cut – just use it and find out if it works. The KJB is
not the product of science, but God. The KJB translators
acknowledged their own weaknesses, so we cannot praise them for
the product God gave them. He caused them to translate properly,
ah perfectly! and history shows God’s blessing on the KJB, not
as a mere translation, but as the very Word of God. Must you
require scientific proof? I will give you the same line you give
evolutionists who also require proof – “Now faith is the
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen….
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the
word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of
things which do appear” (Heb. 11:1-3). Let me add, “But without
faith it is impossible to please [God]” (vs. 6). Perhaps God has
left the textual “scholars” as many confusing manuscripts as He
has left confusing rocks to the scientists? God delights in
hiding from the wise and prudent and revealing unto babes – of
course, that also goes contrary to scholarship and science.
Modern textual criticism is as evil as evolution, because it
makes man the master and judge. Did God authorize all these
modern Bible versions? Did He establish them, or promote them?
Yet, you freely allude to “many other English versions” you have
and make reference to. This is as confusing as all the various
theories evolutionists have as well, each contradicting the
other. They don’t just have one rule for evolution, and you
don’t just have one Bible. Imagine a contractor actually
bragging about building a house with rulers of different lengths
for the foot? Would such a man really be trustworthy? How about
boasting of erecting a tower with squares of various shades away
from 90 degrees? That doesn’t even mention the fact that you
warned of no existing dangerous Bible versions. Should we
conclude that you approve them all if you do not condemn a
single one?
If your belief of superiority of original languages was correct,
then why is it not taught one time in the entire New Testament
in reference to the originals of the Old Testament? Why didn’t
Jesus teach his disciples to get back to the originals and
construct the OT scientifically as closely as they could? Your
scientific theory is impossible and un-Biblical – is it not?
In closing, I wish to add that when my dad used to defend the
seven literal 24 hour days, he noted that in Hebrew, every time
the word hamara was in the context of a number, it was always a
24 hour solar day. This is in distinction to the word aeon which
always means a longer indefinite period of time.
Also, you noted at the end of your article “Even Satan did not
sin until after the six days of creation, because at that time,
everything was still ‘very good.’” Consider that the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil was created and pronounced “very
good.” I think when the world is done and the judgment over, God
will look back over all the work of his hands and say, “behold,
it is very good!”
May God smile on you,
(signed)
Timothy Fellows
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