COMMENTARY: The Fear Of God Is The Beginning Of Wisdom

17

…..by Yves Ephraim 

Recently, I was involuntarily drawn into a debate on Mental Health and though I did not mind the stout disagreement to the points I was making, two concerns emerged.

My first concern has to do with the deep and troubling scorn that was expressed by the majority of anonymous commentators on matters related to Christianity, God and the Bible. I had known for some time now that Antigua and Barbuda had strayed from God but I had no idea how far we had strayed. I am feeling Sodom and Gomorrah vibes.

Reading between the lines of the various commentators, I detected a sentiment of raw hatred towards Christianity, God and the Bible.

What an unfortunate transformation compared to the nation I knew 43 years ago!

I feel very moved to pray earnestly for this nation and encourage other Christians to so do.

The second observation is the false notion that somehow “science” and the Bible are assumed to be naturally at odds with each other. 

Nothing could be farther from the truth!

I am convinced that pure science is always congruent with the Bible.

Let me break it down.

Simply, I compare the Bible to a user manual. The user manual tells you how to power up an appliance and tells you which buttons to push to get the appliance to perform the functions you desire. 

The user manual does not necessarily tell you in any detail how that appliance works within its casing. The user manual is only concerned with showing you what inputs to activate and the output those inputs produce. For the most part, when you use the appliance, you do not see what is actually happening inside the casing. The Bible works somewhat like that.

Continuing with our appliance/user manual metaphor, “science” is merely the revelation, explanation or the discovery of the details of what happens inside the casing when you push a button and an output is produced. 

One definition of science I pulled from the Internet is:

“The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.”

Because Christians believe that God is true, we know that “true” science will always support the Bible. 

Where this all seems to fall apart is where a scientist is more concerned with disproving God than discovering the truth. Often times this bias causes some scientist to collect data that support their own bias and ignore data that does not. The scientific world is rife with many examples of this. 

Even in the immediate aftermath of COVID, information that was revealed through freedom of information requests, demonstrated that there was knowledge of the serious harmful side-effects of the drugs we were forced to take but that knowledge was conveniently suppressed.

There has been many pronouncements made about so called inaccuracy about the Bible, but only to have those assertions reversed years later after new evidence exonerates the testimony of the Bible.

Take for example British physicist, cosmologist Stephen Hawkings who considered himself an atheist, but before dying started to realize that everything in the universe was somehow connected to the sustenance of humans on this planet. 

In other words, he had started to realize that this universe was not merely the result of a random “big bang” that somehow miraculously put everything into perfect order. He had started to gradually concede that the universe itself strongly suggested the involvement a designer/creator.

Whenever science appears to be at odds with the Bible, it is just a sign that man is still early in the discovery of the truth. Inevitably, a new scientist will eventually come along and discover the real truth and once again exonerate the truth of the Bible.

Advertise with the mоѕt vіѕіtеd nеwѕ ѕіtе іn Antigua!
We offer fully customizable and flexible digital marketing packages.
Contact us at [email protected]

17 COMMENTS

  1. “Reading between the lines of the various commentators, I detected a sentiment of raw hatred towards Christianity, God and the Bible.” ~Yves Ephraim

    Mr. Ephraim, you have either deliberately misunderstood the sentiments expressed by commentators, or else your ability to comprehend is seriously impaired.

    People are not expressing “a raw hatred towards Christianity, God and the Bible”. What people are expressing a hatred for is your INTERPRETATION and CHARACTERIZATION of Christianity, God, and the Bible. That is the fundamental difference.

    Your interpretation of the Bible reeks of fundamentalism, casting the Bible as a scientific source. The Bible never claims to be a scientific document, but contains all things NECESSARY FOR SALVATION. The Bible’s primary concern is spiritual, NOT science.

    God gave man intelligence and wisdom to pursue science, while He gave the Bible for salvation. Please know the difference between the two and stop equating people’s repudiation of your stance as a hatred for Christianity, God, and the Bible.

  2. Mr. Ephraim your position that Stephen Hawkins rejected his lifelong held view of Atheism towards the end of his death is untrue. Hawkins always posited that the universe was not created by God as is argued in the Bible and Christianity.

  3. I haven’t read through the entire article but my questions are.
    1. are we all slaves to translation?
    2. Who compiled, removed, reorganize, added verses, books and mistranslations to this final so called Bible we read?
    3. Is this Bible all truth, myth, facts or a mixture of all?
    4. Are we all still blinded by naive beliefs, truth, and knowledge.? Which of the three is more plausible? I think knowledge of truth.
    5. What’s the definition faith? Belief without the absence of evidence, truth and knowledge?

  4. Ironically, Jesus said that the time closest to his return would have the least fear of God. He also said, “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”. Whatever you might accuse Mr. Ephraim of, being cowardly ashamed of Jesus cannot be one of them. Science is observable and repeatable. Many of what passes for science these days is anything but. Take for instance, the theory of evolution and The Big Bang, both theories created to explain the origins of us and the entire world. These were not observed by anyone and we certainly can’t repeat them.

    To be clear, we do not claim creation to be science. It is a story, the relating of actual events. The creation was witnessed creator himself. He related it men, which wrote it down and passed it on to us. Science’s job is to observe and report on the beauty and complexity around us so that we may admire and perhaps better understand it’s creator. It cannot and will not otherwise tell us where we came from and what is our purpose. Darwin had no idea that a single cell of his body was more complicated than a city, but we are left to deal with the results of his theories. I can have pity on the rebellious and ignorant person who desires to spite God by denying his existence. On the other hand, these so-called scientists, daily stare into the beauty and complexity of creation and understand the statistically unlikeliness of even a single protein forming and surviving without divine assistance. They will have a lot to answer for

  5. Confused I agree with you. And who created the blond hair, blue eyed image of Jesus? The answer the Europeans so that they could then use that image and religion to enslave us. That is why to this day, many still believe we are inferior to the white man. For after all if Jesus is the son of God and is white and blond all people that look like him must be Godlike. Today’s generation is no longer accepting this dogma and is asking questions. That does not make them anti-bible or anti-christian. It just makes them people who are using the brain that God gave them.

  6. @Hmmmmmmmmm if you are referring to me Charles Tabor, who ever you are referring to as the CHAOS DEMON I can tell you without a doubt that HE or SHE would not be able to handle me since I am no little push over.

  7. The bible predates those Europeans. Skin colour was not a criteria for determining superiority in its days anyway. As you correctly state, we are all created in the image of God. Anyone that teaches otherwise is not Christian, despite the label. That image of Jesus is obviously false as the bible says that men with long hair is a shame.

  8. @Spot the fake

    You are 💯 correct!!! Too many people purposely hold on to that fake image and use it as an excuse to reject The Creator!!

    We all are freewill beings created by God (John 1) so it’s up to each person to accept God’s Love or not.

    However, in the Judgment there will be no excuses or group judgment. Each man’s record is laid bare before Jesus Christ the Righteous Judge

  9. Is Jesus Christ and God the same entity? I thought God in the Christian Doctrine will be the ultimate judge.

  10. In response to Yves Ephraim’s article about the Fear of God leading to wisdom, let’s talk about the idea that science and the Bible don’t always clash. Ephraim says they actually go hand in hand, like a user manual and an appliance.

    Think of the Bible as the user manual that tells you how to operate something, while science explains what’s going on inside. They’re different but can work together. Sometimes people try to use science to disprove God, but that’s just because they have their own bias.

    Just like how COVID info was hidden, there have been times when people said the Bible was wrong, only to later find out it was right. Even famous scientists, like Stephen Hawking, started to see hints of a creator in the universe despite being atheist before.

    When it seems like science and the Bible clash, it just means we haven’t figured out the whole truth yet. Over time, new discoveries might show that they actually agree. So, let’s keep an open mind and explore different perspectives to deepen our understanding of the world.

  11. @Nuff Fu Chu there is much variance between the anthropological and fossil records and the biblical account of the existence and development of humans beings on earth. While the account of the Bible is that God created Adam and Eve and they walked upright in the Garden of Eden, the anthropological records show how human beings eventually developed bipedaliam. The scientific evidence is irrefutable so maybe everything happened by Intelligent Design.

  12. @Charles Tabor

    AND if everything you see, feel, taste, smell, hear and sense happened by ID, than wouldn’t you refer to this ID as GOD???!!

    GOD created science. Simply put.

    when you look into the night skies, you see a vast solar system within a galaxy within a universe. when you look within the human body or any living creature, or plants or carbon based structure, you also see what in terms is similar to a vastness of a universe as well. from the smallest molecules or neutrons to a identifiable being or creature or structure. All carrying the imprint and creation of a greater mind, an Intelligent Mind, a supreme being, a god, some would say GOD! some would say Jehovah, some would say YHWH, some would say ALLAH, some would call Him by their cultural tongues.

    No matter your intelligence, there is a supreme intelligence higher than yours, and you should have respect, and fear for such!!

    One last thing, with you own understandings . . .always err on the side of such a being. . . may GOD have mercy on our souls!

  13. @Charles Tabor – To your point about “anthropological records” showing progressions in human development…are you aware that many of these “missing links” are missing most of the pieces and many details have been filled in by imagination and dishonesty? Look up “Piltdown man”, “Nebraska man”, “Lucy”, all recognized hoaxes or mistakes, still in text books as “evidence” of evolution.

    The fossil record proves one thing, that there was a global flood as stated in the bible. The oldest known organisms are about 4500 years old, lining up with the time of the flood. Observed phenomenons such as the increase in salinity of the sea, the drifting of the moon from the earth, certain types of radioactive decay and the shrinking of the sun, if reversed would go to zero in thousands, not millions of years. There are rock strata that supposedly formed over millions of years yet they find trees standing upright though them. Obviously the result of rapid deposition of material by fast-flowing water. The Mt St Helens eruption of 1980 created structures that were previously posited to take millions of years such as petrified wood and the “Little Grand Canyon” which was carved in hours. There are fields with thousands of dinosaur fossils, all aligned in the same direction is if they were buried by fast-moving water. The vast reserves of oil and gas were created by large amounts of living things being washed together and buried. No, I don’t expect the average person to know these things but the “scientists” can’t explain these holes in their theories but they’re sure of one thing…there is no God.

    Even scientists will tell you, there is no such thing as settled science. There were scientists that worked on the Hubble telescope that thought that the images it returned were evidence of creation. At the end it’s the loudest voices that get heard, and those that sing the loudest are usually those that have the most to gain.

  14. The #144,000 which will [allegedly] be the ONLY ones #who’re entitled to or earned the right(s) to live with […] for ever and ever and ever, thus number has me kinda baffled, because, TRUMP alone has TWENTY TIMES that much lining up to enter his heavenly White House, since, he’s The Return MESSIAH.

    I need a drink of sea moss and elderberries.

    Ras Smood aka Jumbee Picknee
    De’Ole Dutty Peg🦉Garrat_Bastard

    Vere C. Edwards

Comments are closed.