Viewpoint of Mark Cadwallader, Creation Moments Board Chairman
Years ago, I was on a business trip to Thailand. Having been born there as the son of American missionaries, this was a very special trip! I understood the language at a childhood level and engaged the taxi driver in a conversation. The driver mentioned the word “sokoprok” (dirty), which in my use of that term as a child was always in the sense of cleaning things up and making things look better as in “you need to take a bath and put on some clean clothes!” Yet, the taxi driver was meaning it in terms of “sexual immorality” – referring to “red light district” businesses.
It struck me as odd that I had to process that Thai word differently from my childhood understanding of the language. This was not the type of “sokoprok” that I had learned!
What became interesting to me later is that here in a completely different language and culture heavily dominated by a non-biblical religion, the religion of Buddhism, moral purity was talked about as we do in cultures with lots of biblical influence – in terms of physical cleanliness and standards of good looks – clean vs. dirty. As the Bible puts it, “For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (1 Thessalonians 4:7).
So here, cross-culturally, is a great truth – one that points to our common creation in God’s image. And it can be stated in this way: If A = B and B = C, then A = C. Or: If Moral Purity = Clean and Clean = Beautiful, then Moral Purity = Beautiful. And conversely: If Moral Impurity = Dirty and Dirty = Ugly, then Moral Impurity = Ugly.
Our common recognition of this points to a holy Creator. God is holy, holy, holy – three times holy. Three is the number that means completion in the Bible, pointing to the truth that God is perfectly holy. And He is perfect in wondrous beauty as well (“…that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD…” (Psalm 27:4).
The Bible tells us that as He created on the days of Creation Week “…God saw that it was good”. But after He created man and woman on the sixth and last day of creation, the Bible tells us: “And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). So with the final addition of man and woman prior to sin God’s creation went from “good” to “very good”. The rest of the creation was made for mankind (Genesis 1:26-30) and mankind was made for special relationship with God. And that was all “very good”. It was beautiful, it was wonderful – God’s purpose in creation! And it continues in spite of sin and a fallen world. It is why the Church is the Bride of Christ. People are important to God!
As you know, Paul preached Jesus to the Greek philosophers in Athens on Mars Hill in reference to their altar to “the Unknown God”. He explained that their “Unknown God” was, in fact, “The One True God”. He said to them, “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This is true in a logical and modern scientific sense because all created things reduce to vibrational energy which came originally from the Creator. It is corroborated by other Scripture as well since our Creator “upholds all things by the word of His power” and “by Him all things consist (are sustained)”. Paul said to the Athenian philosophers that this Creator’s purpose in creating mankind was “that they (the nations) should seek the Lord” (Acts 17:27).
But “the nations” have rebelled against their Maker – and things can, therefore, get rather “ugly” and rather “dirty” in this world. We’ve traced some of this recently in these letters, noting the use of evolution as the core lie of many false philosophies and ideologies which seek to subvert Christianity. Yet, God is at work in the midst of all the lies and falsehoods of the devil.
At right, for example, is a young Cuban man who is happily reading our recent Spanish translation of the booklet 101 Scientific Facts and Foreknowledge. The booklets were disseminated in April by short-term missionaries, and they were voraciously received by Christian young people who thought the booklets were ideal for passing on to friends and family still held captive by the indoctrination of the government and government schools. Cuba is the fastest growing country for Christian evangelism in the Western Hemisphere.
In America, we now have a similar problem of indoctrination fueled by evolutionism and socialist sympathies, such as the constant use of identity politics to identify new “victim classes” to replace Karl Marx’s original “proletariats” of the working class. But we also still have much more freedom here in America. And we can have a robust participation in alternative education such as homeschooling and Christian schools, as well as great access to biblical materials and literature.
There is so much work to do in these tumultuous times! And Creation Moments is at the forefront of the battle, proclaiming evidence for the truth of biblical creation and sharing the gospel of Christ worldwide. As the third verse of Martin Luther’s timeless “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” puts it: “And lo this world with devils filled should threaten to undue us, we will not fear for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.”
Thank you for standing with us as we work together to share the truth of our wonderful Maker and Redeemer in this sokoprok world!
Thank you so much for your financial support and your prayers! Without you, we wouldn’t be able to continue broadcasting the gospel and creation truth all over the world!
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