Viewpoint of Mark Cadwallader, Creation Moments Board Chairman
History, simply put, is what has happened. But “what has happened” seems more and more to be misrepresented.
For years, creationists have faced the truth that teachers of history have long ignored and ridiculed what the Bible plainly says “happened”. Modern man has normalized a lie. And much of the church has compromised, discounting the clear meaning of the Bible and the history it reports.
Like the indoctrination of communism and the increasing disinformation we see today, the history of the earth and its people has everywhere been highly distorted to advance a narrative which excludes the God of the Bible. Yet, the Lord knows the truth – past, present, and future! After all, it’s His-story! And what the Bible says about history is true – including the fact that sinful man has colluded with our spiritual adversary – “the father of lies” – to promote deception of all kinds.
The depravity-driven narrative goes something like this: Primordial elements supposedly cooled, coalesced and evolved against all odds into simple organisms … which evolved against all odds into complex animals and into apes … which evolved into men who, perhaps with the help of aliens from outer space, evolved the “idea” of God. And so, enlightened humanist mankind can once again, as at the Tower of Babel, understand he doesn’t need God but can in his hubris replace Him!
Indeed, the “God is Dead” movement of the 1960s proclaimed that the “need” for God had run its course. (Laughable, upside down and foolish when you think about it!) And so the collective accomplishment of a scientific and wealthy mankind today – with its globalist, elitist bent – sees the potential for another Great Humanist Utopian Reset. What this really is, though, is another pride-appealing offer of “enlightenment” from that old serpent.
Creationists also know that much of the information confirming biblical history is quite plain for all to see (Romans 1:19-20). This is in spite of what the Bible calls all the “cunningly devised fables”, all the “willful ignorance” of men (censorship), all the “science falsely so-called”, all the becoming “fools” while “professing to be wise”, and all the changing of “the truth of God into a lie” (2 Peter 1:16, 2 Peter 3:7, 1 Timothy 6:20, Romans 1:22,25).
For example, historians, missionaries, and creationists have studied many of the accounts of different people-groups alongside the famous Table of Nations from Genesis 10. Though names and details are distorted according to different languages and pagan corruptions, the preservation of original biblical terminology and historical events from all over the world is truly astounding! Various people groups confirm such biblical details as the creation of mankind, a great worldwide flood, and dispersion of peoples to far-flung corners of the world after a sudden and tremendous multiplicity of languages. Such evidence testifies to the incredible historical accuracy of Genesis!
Consider, for example, the Hmong and Ka-rén – primitive and frequently animist hill tribes in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia. The Hmong kept an oral tradition of reciting long poems in song at weddings, funerals and other occasions with meticulous recording of their history as descended not from Ham (Lo-Han) like the Han Chinese who persecuted them and drove them out of southern China, but from Japheth (Jah-phu). They also preserved in their poems the names of many other patriarchs from Genesis, including Noah (Nuah), Shem (Lo-Shen), Lamech (Lama), Cush (Cusah), Gomer (Go-men) and others.
As in Genesis, the Hmong poems mention that God created man from dirt and that He created a woman from the man He had created. They speak of a Great Flood with torrential rains that lasted exactly 40 days as Genesis tells us. And the poems speak of the fact that in the beginning, mankind all spoke one language and that they all worked together to build a big city with a very high tower. They say that God became angered at the offensive collective arrogance and made it so they could not understand each other’s language, causing them to abandon the project and disperse throughout the earth.
Let me hasten to add that the use of long poems and songs to relay history makes it virtually impossible to corrupt the re-tellings. Try corrupting the meaning to advance a different narrative in Tennyson’s historically accurate poem The Charge of the Light Brigade. It is impossible because the poetry and rhythm have to be correct, essentially forcing a retention of the narrative.
Another hill tribe – the Ka-rén – is also known to have poems that relate an astounding connection with the Old Testament understanding of biblical history and of Yahweh (Y’wa). However, the poems do not mention Abraham or Moses. Therefore, they cannot owe their heritage to being a lost tribe of Israel or having other foundational contact with Jews. Neither can they be said to have had contact with Christian missionaries before Adoniram Judson in the early 19th century. That’s because they have no poem speaking of Jesus the Redeemer. In fact, what they did have at the time of Judson’s contact was an ancient prophetic tradition of a white man carrying a golden book who would one day arrive to bring salvation!
Indeed, one of Judson’s first few converts to Christianity in Burma was a Ka-rén thief and murderer, Ko Tha Byu. He became an evangelist to his people, connecting the dots for his listeners to their own people’s history and prophecy. Through Byu, many thousands became Christians. And conversions spilled over to other hill tribes as well, with continued missionary activity through the 19th and 20th centuries. Hill tribes such as the Lahu, the Wa, the Akha, the Lisu, the KaChin and others had heard of the white-man-golden-book-salvation prophecy and had their own people group history helping to steer them to redemption with our Holy Creator.
In a time of accelerating revisionist history, we do well to remember and to encourage others to understand that we all need to go to the Bible to accurately assess “what happened”. The Bible shines the light of truth on all things and offers life abundant and eternal … the very gospel that Creation Moments has been proclaiming for almost 60 years!
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