January 2024: Radiocarbon Dating- A Gift from God

Steve:
Hello and welcome to the BC Messenger Podcast. This is real science, real Bible, real history, and real world. It is January 2024, the first episode of the New Year, episode 18. And my name is Steve Hall, sitting there right across from the table from me in our little studio is my wife, Jennifer. And we host this podcast every month.

Jennifer:
We want to greet our friends at the beginning of a brand new year 2024. Thanks for joining us. 

Steve:
Yes. Happy New Year to you. One of our daughters, Jen, this year for Christmas received a kaleidoscope. Is that how you say it? Kaleidoscope.

Jennifer:
Kaleidoscope. We were in a bookstore and it caught her eye over in the children's section, a toy display. She began to play with it. And so I had to sneak back in there later and get that for her for Christmas. That is a classic toy.

Steve
It is a classic toy.

Jennifer:
I'm sure our listeners have had various seasons of gift giving and kids or grandkids or whoever in your life, you know, enjoying their special things this time of year. But a kaleidoscope is a fun toy. And of course you turn it slowly, look through the little opening, turning it slowly. And there's light coming in, shining across these beads, of course. And you can turn it and see so many different views and scopes and colors and patterns, you know, coming into view there. It's a really cool, simple, classic toy.

Steve:
Sometimes the most classic toys are some of the best. We're mentioning that because on our episode today, we've got quite a bit of things to bring out. We have a number of aspects of the ministry here to look at. This is opposite from our last podcast, episode. The last one, we had pretty much one topic we were on, which was the age of the earth. Go back and listen to that if you haven't listened to it yet. And during that episode, we mentioned a topic that we decided, you know what, we better wait till next month. That's a topic in and of itself. And that's what we're going to hit on first here today. And that's the topic of radiocarbon dating.

Jennifer:
And along with that, though, we have quite a list of other items. And so our podcast today is kind of like a kaleidoscope. We are going to turn, you know, the viewpoint just a little bit. And many different things are going to come into focus, scenes, outlooks, but they're all coming from one source. And that is the work here at The Biblical Chronologist.

Steve:
Yes, that's right. So let's jump right into it. Go ahead and give us, Jen, a bullet points list of what we're talking about today.

Jennifer:
Our feature topic is Radiocarbon Dating, A Gift From God. We will get into that in just a moment. Then we have some feedback from our listeners, people who have wanted to share their thoughts with us after listening, which we always appreciate. We always love that. Then we have a quick research update, flowing again out of the manna discovery, a brand new article that has come out. A Truth in Time update on the ministry, the traveling, speaking, and singing ministry that we have here. Then we have the anti-aging vitamins section of the podcast. We will be having a testimonial from Alan being shared later in the podcast. Helen's View will be there at the end where she reaches back to 1995, a throwback, something from the very beginning of The Biblical Chronologist. And there you go. That's the rundown.

Steve:
All right. Our featured topic this month is on the subject of radiocarbon dating. We're actually calling it radiocarbon dating, a gift from God. The reason we've jumped into this this month is because last month on our podcast, we were discussing the age of the earth and the topic of radiocarbon dating came up as a major tool in understanding the age of the earth. And we decided it was too big of a topic to include in last month's podcast. So that's why we're into it this month. And in a little bit, we're going to actually hear from Dr. Aardsma himself in an interview that we had with him some months ago now. And that'll be interesting. But before we get to that, we want to have a little discussion here about radiocarbon dating. What is that? Some of you listening to the podcast may know, you may have studied this before and talked about this and read up on this. And some of you may have no clue. You don't even know what that means, radiocarbon dating. Well, radiocarbon dating is used to date artifacts from up to 50,000 years ago. This causes now, as we discussed last month, a conundrum, a difficulty for the Bible believer. Some Christian groups claim that radiocarbon dating must, it must just be a hoax. It's obviously unreliable science, some will say. It's based upon assumptions. It involves circular reasoning and on and on and on. So the question is, is this true? Is this particular tool, and that's what we're talking about today, radiocarbon dating is a science, it's a tool. Is it true that it's not reliable? We're going to hear directly from Dr. Aardsma on the topic. Is it possible that the Christian should really be seeing radiocarbon dating as an amazing gift from God? Dr. Aardsma actually says that. He's the first one I've ever heard say that. That we ought to be seeing this as a gift from God.

Jennifer:
Dr. Aardsma is uniquely qualified to speak to this issue. And we are the communications team. We don't have any direct training in radiocarbon dating ourselves. We are your average layperson. We've read up on it so we can help explain some things to you today. But we're communicating to you the work that he has done. And he did obtain his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from the University of Guelph back in 1978 and '79. That would have been when I was two and three years old. He got his PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Toronto in 1984. During his PhD studies and subsequently as an NSERC post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Aardsma worked in the newly founded field of accelerator mass spectrometry, which is a field widely employed now for radiocarbon and other rare isotope dating methods.

Steve:
So he knows his stuff.

Jennifer:
He worked very closely in with some of this developing science in the radiocarbon dating. Physical dating methods, such as radiocarbon, play a very important role in the construction of historical chronologies. And of course, we're used to seeing that word chronology here. So his background in physics, his specialization in these radioisotopic dating methods, provide him with the tools that are needed to critically evaluate secular dates and their relationship to biblical chronology. And this is from his bio on his website. He's not only a physicist and a chronologist, he's also a conservative Christian, and his research reflects a high view of both the scientific and the biblical data bearing on any question. So those are his credentials. This is why he is uniquely qualified to talk to us about radiocarbon dating and express confidence in it as you're going to hear. And then we had a section from the Age of the Earth collection that we talked about last year that you can download for free of his writings on this topic. Here's what he says about radiocarbon and himself personally. "I think it is the case that nobody has ever investigated this question as critically and as thoroughly as I have. It was to get to the bottom of the reliability of radiometric dating methods that I chose the particular PhD program that I did some two decades ago and my decision to join the faculty of the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School following graduation was entirely motivated by my concern to plumb the depths of this question." What he's saying is he wanted to get to the bottom of the question of the reliability of radiometric dating methods. So the reliability of radiocarbon dating is of extreme importance to biblical chronology and to our whole understanding of the past. It is worth every bit of personal pain it may cost to get to the bottom of this question for somebody who's trying to accurately harmonize biblical and secular accounts of Earth history. So he says, "I prosecuted this question very critically through every means available to me for over a decade. I entered this investigation with an extreme prejudice against the reliability of radiocarbon dating and I emerged from it over a decade later with an assured and unqualified conviction that yes, radiocarbon dating can be trusted in the pre-flood period back at least until 9,000 BC." So that kind of sets you up with where he's coming from and who he is in this field.

Steve:
And we're going to be hearing from Dr. Aardsma again in just a few minutes. Before we do though, let's talk about something here that I think is very important on this subject. And that is, what we are dealing with here today with this subject, is a tool. Tools are very important. Men and women have been given a command by God-if you're a Christian, you understand this and you believe this- that God has given it to sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, mankind, to take dominion over this earth, to understand it, to grow in our understanding of the world and of God's creation. And there's very practical reasons for this. Number one, for the benefit of mankind, and for the glory of God.

Jennifer:
And it was the only way Adam and Eve were going to survive in the world is to take dominion of it. Right. They had to start solving problems right away when God gave them this commission back in early in Genesis. It's sometimes we call it the dominion mandate or the cultural mandate.

Steve:
Right. And a word used in the Bible is subdue, subdue the earth. So we're to understand it. We're to grow in our knowledge of it. And in that, grow in our knowledge of God, the one who made it, the one who created it. Now, how do we do that? Okay. Here's how it works. We use and we invent and we come up with tools that enable us to be able to do these things. How are we going to take dominion? Well, we do have to have tools in order to do it. For instance, a man's eyes are not made to see a human cell or an omeba. So he needs a tool to be able to do that. A person's eyes cannot see and make sense out of stars and planets with our own human eyes. So we need to develop tools to be able to see them properly. A person's hands are not strong enough to dig the foundation for a large skyscraper in a city. So we make tools to do that.

Jennifer:
A person's hands really aren't strong enough even to cultivate the ground to grow a garden. 

Steve:
Exactly. A shovel is a very basic tool.

Jennifer:
Pretty good tool, though.

Steve:
That's right.

Jennifer:
Can you imagine Adam before he had a shovel and after he had a shovel, if he had a shovel? I mean, that's a life-changing tool.

Steve:
And then the tools just keep developing. Now we have front-loaders and backhoes and amazing inventions that God has given man the ability to come up with. A person's feet can't carry them across the oceans to discover new worlds. So the point is that through the invention of tools, through mankind's ingenuity, innovation, creativity, resourcefulness, skills, talents, mankind is able, unlike any other creature that God has made on Earth, to take dominion over the earth, to understand it, to grow in knowledge of it. And boy, we have seen that. Especially, we were talking about this just earlier today even, especially in our day. We live in a day of huge advancement. Now, we haven't reached the pinnacle yet. There's still much more to be discovered. But for so many years in history, there wasn't a ton of progress being made, some was. But since the coming of Christ, we have had great, great advancements. And we've seen this with our own eyes, especially in the past few years.

Jennifer:
Especially these past few hundred years. And the more I have grown in my understanding of the dominion mandate, the cultural mandate, I think it's so inspiring to look at the world that way, that God has created man to solve problems. And even in raising my children, I love to have that outlook that look, yeah, that's a challenge, but you're a problem solver and you can figure this out. And God may have some really big problems for you to go out and solve, to increase his kingdom in the world and to alleviate suffering. So that's a study of itself that we personally really didn't embark upon until maybe a good five, six years ago. We began to really understand more about creating tools, taking dominion, and all that God's commissioned man to do.

Steve:
That's right. And what a great purpose to give young people, to go out here and live for something bigger than yourself, and help your fellow man. And in the process, as a Christian, you're giving glory to God and bringing people into the kingdom of Christ with the gospel. Now, when we talk about science, we are talking about the study of God's natural world through observation, through experimentation, so that we can gain a knowledge of this world that he has commanded us to subdue. And there are many tools that have been developed for this purpose. Everybody knows what a microscope looks like, right? Or a telescope, or whatever scientific tool may come to your mind. But the purpose of the tools are to learn and to discover truth in this world. Now, here's the problem with the tools. The problem with the tools is that they are unsympathetic and unrelenting. They don't care what we feel like. They don't care about our emotions. They don't care about our beliefs. They don't care about our theology and our doctrine. They're tools. And the purpose of the tool is to do its job, that it does its job well and gives us truth about whatever it's supposed to be giving. At least a tool of learning. I mean, a chainsaw isn't giving us truth, but a chainsaw is doing what it's supposed to do. It's a tool of building or practical.

Jennifer:
Well, a chainsaw is a great tool to solve problems and probably could help you learn some things that otherwise you wouldn't be able to do without that tool.

Steve:
Right. But the problem with the tools is, as with every good gift that God gives to us, there is a dangerous side to them. Again, a chainsaw has a dangerous side, obviously. If you know how to use it properly and you understand it right and you put it to its proper use, it's going to do you good. If you don't, or if you're misunderstanding it or whatever, it can become very dangerous to you.

Jennifer:
Well, what do you think the dangerous side of a microscope would be?

Steve:
Okay. So with a tool of learning, such as a microscope or radiocarbon dating, the dangerous side is that we find things that might be true that we didn't think were true to begin with.

Jennifer:
Right. And it can overturn our previous ideas about things.

Steve:
We quoted on our previous podcast, that sometimes truth can be like fire. Truth can get you in big trouble because it's going against what you've always believed, what everybody you know has always believed, and that is dangerous and can become dangerous. And that's what we're dealing with radiocarbon dating. And the tools used, mass... what is it? Accelerator mass spectrometry. And these machines and these tools that have allowed us, and I think we're going to get into some of this in a minute, how it works, but have just been huge advancements in allowing us to understand this world that God has made. So we have a choice to make when these things happen, when we are faced with these things. Are we going to accept the truth that we are understanding from the tool, and accept the truth that we are understanding from the Bible? Or are we going to just chuck one or the other? Because that's what typically we humans tend to want to do. We just say, well, okay, the tool is showing us that the Bible isn't true, at least that's what we assume. So chuck the tool, man, it's either it's unreliable, we don't trust it, the scientists are all bad people, so we're just going to stand firm on the faith with the furrowed brow, arms crossed, forget about that. Well, is that the right way to go? Or we say, well, I can't have faith in the Bible anymore. I'm just chucking the Bible because, I mean, obviously it's not true. So the science is true. Well, neither one of those is the right way to go. If God's word is true, and it is, if God's world and the tools are showing us truth in the world, then the tension is going to be resolved at some point between these two things.

Jennifer:
Right. And that's what can happen is tools can bring you to points of tension that you didn't previously face. And you can go back and listen to last month's podcast and many of our others to find out about building confidence in God's word as a true historical record. Today, we're going to talk about building confidence in the science side of things. And in these tools, as Steve said, that's basically what radiocarbon dating is, is a tool. And so now we want to talk about, how does it work? Just very basic. Of course, we're not able to give you anything too technical here, but it was invented in the 1940s by Willard Libby.

Steve:
Willie Libbered. Willard Libby.

Jennifer:
Willard Libby up at the University of Chicago, which is not too far from where we are. But back in the 1940s, and it caused his invention, his discovery, caused what is known as the radiocarbon revolution, especially in the fields of archaeology and geology. Radiocarbon dating is used to date organic material. So anything that used to be alive can be dated by this process.

Steve:
So human remains, animal remains, plants, leather, papyrus, logs from buildings, baskets, grains, that kind of thing.

Jennifer:
Yes. So when this method was developed, it helped to disprove several previously held beliefs as Steve was just describing, as tools can do. So what it actually does when they radiocarbon date something, it is measuring a ratio of carbon isotopes in that organic material. Most of the carbon in the universe, in the world, is stable carbon, which is called C12, stable carbon isotopes. But there is a portion that are unstable, and that is C14, carbon-14 radiocarbon. It is not stable, which means that over time, it turns from being carbon-14 isotopes into nitrogen, N14 I believe. And so that happens at a known rate that scientists are aware of. And so they can measure the ratio, stable to unstable, and they can know how old that object is by the amount of the radiocarbon, the C14, that's left in the organic material measured against the stable carbon that's there. So that's what they're doing. They're measuring a ratio. So you can do this in three different ways. I'll list them here. Gas proportional counting, liquid scintillation counting, and what we've already mentioned a couple times, accelerator mass spectrometry. The purpose, as we've said, is to determine the ratio of radiocarbon to stable carbon in that sample. And from this measurement, the age in radiocarbon years is calculated. So that's how scientists go about doing this thing called radiocarbon dating.

Steve:
It just amazes me because I'm not a scientist and I don't have the mind of a scientist. But I thank God for those who do and who have studied these things in such detail and know these numbers and calculations. And it's just a testament to the glory of God again, that God has given mankind that ability to do that.

Jennifer:
And it's a world that most of us on a daily basis don't enter into. But when you get a little glimpse of it, it immediately just causes you to appreciate those who have made those advancements. So I think this brings us now to being ready to listen to this 12-minute portion of Dr. Aardsma talking about this question of, why would you refer to radiocarbon dating as a gift from God? And as you listen to him, you will learn more and gain more insight into what this is really all about as a scientific tool.

Steve:
Right. This is about 12-minute little interview. And here's Jennifer and Dr. Aardsma.

Jennifer:
All right. Can you briefly comment on, I heard you say one time that radiocarbon is a wonderful gift from God. And I love that. I like it because it kind of flies in the face of some commonly held perceptions of things like radiocarbon dating. So it's a little bit contrary, I guess, to say it's a wonderful gift from God. But it does, it's something that needs to be explained. And I'd like for our listeners to have a little bit of a grasp of why would you say that, as opposed to, it's an evil tool of the devil that has been used to get everybody not believing the Bible anymore?

Dr. Aardsma:
Right. Okay. The idea that it's a tool of the devil, chronology is extremely powerful for the purpose of falsification of wrong ideas. Therefore, people who hold dear certain wrong ideas that they want to protect from rational discourse, you will always find that they trash chronology. And since radiocarbon dating is the main dating method used in the period of interest to the Bible, they will especially trash radiocarbon dating. Libby, who was the inventor of the radiocarbon dating method, he called it a miracle. He called it the miracle of radiocarbon dating. The reason it's a miracle from his point of view, he was a physicist and he was living in the time when they were learning all about the radioactivity and the different radioactive half-lives of different elements. And all the different elements that God has created come with different isotopes which have different half-lives and can break down. Some are stable, have very long half-lives, some are vanishingly short half-lives. The deal is, for archaeology, which is what you're going to get into if you're going to be testing your understanding of the Bible against the secular understanding of the same historical period, you're going to be dealing in archaeology, and you're likely to be dealing in archaeology covering just during the last 10,000 years. The Bible doesn't have anything much to say about virtual history, nothing to speak of. So if we place the data of creation around 5,600 BC, then we have 7,000, 8,000 years. And that's the period of time for history. And the Bible is all about history, things like the Exodus. It's talking about things that happened in Egypt and ultimately in Canaan under the leadership of this man called Moses. And that's all history. And if you want to examine that history, investigate that history, and ask the question, "Am I understanding what the Bible is saying about that history properly?" Then you're going to need to know, "Well, when did it happen?" And then you're going to go and look for historical documents from that period of time. And then you're also going to want to look at what the archaeologists are finding. They're the people who dig up the ancient remains and tell you what they found. Well, that's all happening within like the last 8,000 years. And if you're going to be able to date something in that period using a physical dating method, you're going to have to have an element with a half-life which is appropriate. A half-life is how long it takes for half of a substance to disappear. And the way this works is that you have a certain amount of atoms, all of the same type, and they're radioactive. After one half-life, you're down to half of it left. After two half-lives, you're down to a quarter of it left because it takes another half-life for a half of the surviving half to disappear. And so it keeps going on down. Well, it doesn't take very many half-lives before so much of it has disappeared. There's nothing left to measure anymore. So if you have a short half-life, you'll have nothing to measure. If you have a very long half-life, nothing ever decays and you can't see any change in the time that you're watching. So you have to have just the right half-life. Well, if you look at all the periodic table of the elements and all of the half-lives that are out there, you'll find the range going from billions of years down to microseconds. And here, we really need something that has a half-life which is in thousands of years, because we want to be able to measure a change over the course of thousands of years. Well, we don't just need something. We need one particular thing to have that. One particular element has to have that half-life measured in thousands of years. And that one element is carbon, because carbon is the element that life is based on. All of our molecules that make up our body are organic molecules. That means that they are carbon-based. They all contain carbon. And so if you want to study the history of people, then you really want to study the history of living things. You want to be able to date trees. You want to be able to date papyrus. You'd like to be able to date the parchment that the Dead Sea Scrolls is written on. You'd like to be able to date sandals. You'd like to be able to date grain that people stored in jars that they would be eating. These, all of these things are, these are all organic things. They're all based around the carbon atom. And so to have a physical dating method to be able to study the history that we're given in the Bible relative to the secular history, we absolutely need to have a carbon isotope with a half-life measured in thousands of years. And what do we get? We get carbon-14 with a half-life of 5,700 some odd years. You have to say, for all the world, looks like God did it on purpose. It's God's beautiful gift to us so that we humans, who are so error-prone, can actually check what we think he's trying to say to us through the Bible against what he has shown us through his world, to see whether we've got it right or not. Most beautiful, I mean, still raises the hairs on the back of my neck to see that God would have done such a thing.

Jennifer:
Well, it's like anything else, I suppose, that if you don't understand it, you don't have a knowledge of it, you don't appreciate it. And the more you delve into it and get a grasp of where it's coming from, and how it's singled out, out of all the half-lives of all the elements, then you begin to really understand what a precious gift God gave us in that. And in relation to the history of the world that we're in, and biblically in everything.

Dr. Aardsma
Yeah, it's remarkable. Now, there's a flip side to it. The flip side, to carry on with your argument, that if you are the enemy, if you're Satan, you want to keep everybody as confused as possible, then you want to trash radio carbon dating up down and sideways because it provides this unique ability to date things without anybody's opinion in there. It's a physical dating method. You measure the radiocarbon signal coming out of the sample. You calibrate it against tree rings. It's not some scholar saying, "Well, I read this manuscript and this scholar said such and such happened and he saw a certain star fall over here against something over there. And in my opinion, that means it must have happened." That's what they were doing before the advent of radio carbon dating. I think Kathleen Kenyon, who was very active in digging up Jericho, explained that you go back before about 2000 BC and it's just totally hopeless. We're lost, she was saying. She was doing her work before the advent of radiocarbon dating.

Jennifer:
That's interesting.

Dr. Aardsma:
She was saying back to about 2000 BC, it gets harder and harder to get a reliable date on anything. We have a lot of scholars with a lot of different opinions. But by the time you go back beyond 2000 BC, we're just making the best guesses we can because there's no writing when you get back that far. There's just very few...

Jennifer:
Just didn't have a good measuring stick, I guess.

Dr. Aardsma:
That's right. So they would measure how thick the strata was and say, "Well, it might take maybe 100 years to have an archaeological strata of that thickness." Well, that's very subjective. A tree ring calibrated radio carbon dating gets rid of all that subjectivity. You measure the radioactivity coming out of that sample and what you get is what you got. Nothing you can do about it. That's the true date of the sample and now you better get your storytelling about what happened back there to suit the true date of that sample because if you're not, you're just simply telling fairy tales.

Jennifer:
Going back to what you were saying there about the flip side, as Christians and as God-fearing people, we can see radio carbon dating as a wonderful miraculous gift from God. The enemy can turn that around and cast doubt on it and demonize it and everything, which is what Satan always does. He takes God's actually good gifts and clouds them, mixes them all up, confuses everybody about them and, so often, that's just the patterns we see. Very interesting.

Steve:
We hope that segment of the interview was helpful to you and I love that interview, that part where he's talking about how it's almost like someone did this on purpose, that here we have this element within the world that is allowing us to take these tools and go back and date these things like someone wants us to do this.

Jennifer:
Right. From biblical history.

Steve:
Again, back to our Dominion mandate. He has put it right there like a puzzle. This is what God does. Go out and search  for me. Find me when you look for me with all your heart.

Jennifer:
That's right. Yeah. It's very neat. That living things would have this isotope in them, things previously living, going back into biblical history that we can then use to get the story straight. That's just incredible. All right. I wanted to tell our listeners a little bit about tree rings and dendrochronology is what that's called, dendrochronology. Because I don't know if most people realize that radiocarbon dating is not a shot in the dark as far as, well we think we've got this all right, we're just going to do these measurements and as far as we know this is all right. We have independent checks, and that is so important in science, is having a way to check independently the result that you've gotten with your tool, because tools can have problems. For example, I could make my own yardstick and I could say I have made a yardstick and I'm going to go out and measure things with my newly made yardstick. I've got inches and centimeters here and feet and so I'll let you know the measurements. Well, it would be a good idea to calibrate my yardstick. Calibrate, that's the word, against another measurement tool. Maybe a tape measure or something you have that also has those same measuring types of things, so that you can know that you have an accurate tool. That's what goes on with these tree rings, the tree ring calibration of radiocarbon dating. It's no longer just, we think that the decay rates have been constant, or those types of things that you often will hear said are just assumptions. Actually, the tree ring calibration takes out many of the things that people say are just assumptions, because you have this independent check measuring against the radiocarbon dates, and when they both agree, you can be very assured that you're getting accurate measurements.

Steve:
So let me ask you this question. Why are you talking about tree rings? What do tree rings have to do with anything?

Jennifer:
God again has built into creation this cool thing that trees do which is grow a ring every year and tree rings.

Steve:
We have trees that are very, very old.

Jennifer:
We do. We have some that are still alive even that are very old, and then we have others that are dead. But the tree rings are still there whether the tree is alive or dead, and the radiocarbon in that tree can still be measured, of course. And so the tree rings are able to be counted. The tree ring chronology can be constructed. You can take one very old tree then you can overlap its rings with the patterns of other very old trees. And in fact, by doing this, they have constructed a chronology, let's see, going 10,000 years back from just right now just from tree rings. And it's a very detailed science and scientists all over the world have worked on it. Their results generally agree from different types of trees, different areas in the world, and they're getting the same results that can be plotted. And so we have this tree ring chronology going back at least 10,000 years before now, which works really well for checking the radiocarbon dates and the accuracy of the tree rings, the reliability is demonstrated in different ways. It's so fascinating. One of the things I learned is that sometimes people will say, "Well, we don't know if trees have always grown one ring per year. Maybe they have grown more than that in the past." And there's ways you can even check that, because the sun goes through patterns of 96 years, 51 years of something called quiescence. And in these very old tree ring chronologies, you have the 51 year, the 96 year patterns going all the way back to 10,000 years before now. So the patterns are there, they're consistent. There are different ways to just verify the confidence in these tools of science. And again, I think God enjoys seeing His creation of man go in and study and figure out and put these puzzle pieces together. But I think the dendrochronology, the tree ring calibration, does not enter into the discussion as much as it should when creationists are talking about radiocarbon dating, normally in a negative context. They don't bring up the fact that these results are calibrated, and that all of this has been done in so many different places in the world by so many different scientists. And that kind of brings me to this little summary that I had here as we wrap up this section, that the truth is that radiocarbon dating is a very effective and valuable tool in the hands of competent chronologists. As with any physical measurement, things can go wrong, mistakes can be made. But this just means that one should not hang their whole confidence on a lone radiocarbon date. In actual practice, it is the amassed evidence of multiple radiocarbon dates generally on different materials by different investigators using different measurement apparatus, which is applied to a given chronological question.

Steve:
And that's what we're trying to communicate here is that this is something we've learned. Again, we're not scientists, but we are understanding and want to communicate through this podcast that this is, as you just said a minute ago, a valuable tool, very effective and very important for us. It would be wrong for God's people not to take advantage of such tools to be able to understand God's world and praise the Lord for it. It is a gift from God, as Dr. Aardsma said in the interview. Now, of course, if you're just jumping into this podcast this presents a conundrum of, okay, well, what about the age of the earth then? I mean, the Bible or science?

Jennifer:
Right. You're saying that there's things that are dating 50,000 years, you know, old, like that kind of doesn't really work out biblically, does it?

Steve:
So we have to refer you to last month's podcast. So that would be the December 2023 podcast called The Age of the Earth, and that's where we went into great detail on the conundrum.

Jennifer:
About how these things actually can work together.

Steve:
And they can and they do. Now, do we have all the answers? Absolutely not. We are very finite, and we are discovering an infinite Creator, God. But we cannot ignore any truth that God is revealing to us. And it's only going to be natural and normal that, as our tools progress, as our understanding goes on, we might think we've reached the pinnacle in the top and discovered it all and got all our theology in order and all our "T's" crossed and our "i's" dotted just as they should be. But he's an infinite Creator, and we're always going to realize, wait a minute, God is always surprising us. It's probably going to be further in than I thought. It's going to be something completely different than we ever imagined, and he's going to get the glory for it. And the points of tension eventually are going to be resolved because it's all truth.

Jennifer:
Here's a quotation I wanted to read right at the end of this section. A gentleman who nominated Willard Libby for a Nobel Prize for his work in this fascinating revolutionary discovery, here's what he said, this gentleman who nominated Willard Libby. "Seldom has a single discovery in chemistry had such an impact on the thinking in so many fields of human endeavor. And seldom has a single discovery generated such wide public interest." I think it's interesting that most of our listeners have probably heard of radio carbon dating, although many scientific terms and tools are not familiar to us. But that one really permeated into the general public and revolutionized some various fields of science. So thanks for listening to our discussion of that today.

And we're going to turn the kaleidoscope now a little bit here, shift, shift focus and something else is going to come into view.

Steve:
We're going to talk a little bit here about some comments from some of our listeners in regard to recent episodes of our podcast. And here's a comment that has come in over the last few weeks from a pastor, a pastor in Connecticut. And this is relating to the Manna podcast that we did, the Manna Discovery. This pastor said this, "I've been behind on BC Messenger (BC Messenger podcast episodes) and decided to start the Manna episode. I'll confess that I was skeptical. But then listening to the explanation, I thought, huh, that's pretty interesting. That's plausible. I think like a lot of people who do believe the Manna was literally a miracle from God, I think I thought it just supernaturally appeared every morning. Like Jennifer said, I thought it was like vanilla wafers the Lord just gave to them. Anyway, I wanted to acknowledge that I thought the discussion was really interesting. It reminded me of the Exodus plagues. Those are something else that certainly could be just pure supernatural miracle from God. But there are some plausible naturalistic explanations for how God utilized his own creation to foster those judgments." So, that was again a comment from a pastor in Connecticut.

Jennifer:
Our Manna episode, the first one, is our most listened to podcast of any. And we've had quite a bit of activity on the podcast in recent weeks, showing growth and more interest in the various topics. Then we have some listeners from Illinois, again, in regard to the Manna, sent this in September. "Absolutely love listening to the BC Messenger podcast. The last one regarding Manna is absolutely amazing. We just ordered the book and can't wait to try the Manna." Of course, if you order the book you get a sample packet of the Manna substance with the book.

Steve:
Right. Here's one from an individual we actually met on social media, who has come into listening to our podcast through social media. This individual left a comment through Twitter, I guess it was, and the subject of the podcast that she's referring to is on the Age of the Earth, last month's podcast. She said this, "I thought you guys did a phenomenal job explaining your understanding in this recent podcast. The question answer format was helpful because I was right there with your examples of pushback. You brought me along to see how it really can be otherwise."

Jennifer:
Then we have two listeners from New York who sent this comment about the Israel, a Nation Robbed of its History episode that we had a few months ago, and how the work here pertains to restoring Israel's literal history. This listener says, "We listened this morning to the latest BC Messenger podcast, as always, we completely enjoyed it. This particular edition is special for pointing out the importance of Israel's actual, factual history to the nation of Israel, as well as to the church, the USA, and the world. I wish every person on earth would hear this podcast and appreciate the ramifications of this topic.

Steve:
Very good. Well, these are all very encouraging comments that we've received.

Jennifer:
We're saving one more for the very end.

Steve:
Yeah, that's right. We are. We'll have one at the very end. Now we get some comments, especially on social media, that aren't so positive. That's okay. And we're up for any kind of comment, criticisms, encouragements. Questions. Questions we're trying to learn too over here, and we encourage you, send us a comment, send us a thought if you want to be an encouragement to us, or if you want to present us with a question, or if you want to say you don't agree, hey, send it on. We are open over here, surrounding the table of discussion on some pretty big topics. 

Jennifer:
We know there's people on the other end of the line hearing these episodes, and we can see the stats and activity as it happens there throughout the months. And that's always wonderful. But numbers are not the same thing as people. And so seeing the numbers is exciting, and encouraging. Hearing from the people is even better.

Steve:
That's right. All right, we're going to turn that kaleidoscope again, Jen. Focus in on a different aspect of the ministry here. We have another research update to let you know about. I hope you're keeping up with these research updates by Dr. Aardsma. He's really on a track right now of just one discovery after another, specifically dealing with the Exodus. And he's been able to devote a lot more time recently to that subject, and God has just given him one discovery after another. You can go to his newsletters. We always like to mention this on the podcast, right there at thebiblicalchronologist.org, go to his newsletters and keep up with all of these updates. The latest one is Israel's zero population growth during the Exodus. Now, you may not know what he's talking about here. Basically, let me just give this to you quickly. When Israel left Egypt, they left as a very large nation, millions. That was the whole reason for the oppression in the first place. They were getting too big. And so, this was scaring the government officials and the Pharaoh of Egypt. And so they had to be subdued. That's why they were in slavery in the first place. Anyhow, when they leave Egypt, they go out into this wilderness and they're there for 40 years, something is going on because their population certainly is not increasing like it was in Egypt. As a matter of fact, it slightly decreases. The Bible gives us these numbers.

Jennifer:
A population count is given for Israel at the beginning of their sojourn in the wilderness. And then 40 years later at the end, before they enter the promised land, another population count is given. And it is nearly the same both times. We don't have the growth that you would expect based upon what was happening in Egypt. We don't even have half of that growth. And they numbered the people and so that's given to us. So, you got to ask the question, well, what was going on? And most people probably have not asked that question. But that's why Dr. Aardsma is here to ask these questions and then provide answers for us that verify the historicity of the numbers and the accounts.

Steve:
And it ties into the manna discovery. We'll let you know that. It comes as a result, this particular article, of the previous manna discovery. It all ties together.

Jennifer:
So, if you go to the show notes, you can go to the link there and read this new article and find out the reason. All right. Here we go. Shifting that kaleidoscope again. Turn it again. A new view coming here with a Truth in Time update.

Steve:
Yeah. Now, something special has happened in our family recently. Jennifer completed her citizenship. And if you've been listening along, you know about this, that she is now officially a citizen of the United States of America, previously a Canadian citizen.

Jennifer:
As of November 30th, yes, I am sworn in as a naturalized citizen of the US. Now, you may be wondering what in the world does this have to do with being a Truth in Time update? Well, truth in time is our traveling, speaking, singing ministry flowing out of the work here. And in the future, we plan to have tours to Israel. When we began to explore, first of all, us going to Israel to make a survey trip of these newly discovered sites of the route of the Exodus, I realized that the time had come for me to go ahead and get my American citizenship since I've been wanting to do that for years anyway. We've talked about it. And then realizing that we didn't want Steve to travel on a US passport and me travel on a Canadian passport overseas, we thought it would be good for us both to travel as a US citizen. So I began the process and we talked to our listeners a little bit about that. But it has finally come to a conclusion and I am a very proud and happy citizen of this great land.

Steve:
And it was a neat ceremony. We enjoyed that very much. But that is the reason, we are planning trips to Israel. You mentioned this a second ago. Let me stress that. We're not talking about any normal trip that, you know, you may be thinking of a trip to Israel to go visit the standard sites. 

Jennifer:
Sea of Galilee, which we would love to do, of course.

Steve:
Sure. We're talking about going to potentially see these locations that Dr. Aardsma has been discovering, and showing the actual route of the Exodus.

Jennifer:
Which is centralized around the central Negev Desert there. And of course, national conditions in Israel are going to need to be favorable to us to be able to make this trip. So we're praying about that and asking God to show us his timing in that. But whenever we need to, we can get our passports at this point. So that's exciting.

Steve:
But right now, we are scheduling for 2024 for meetings with our music and our speaking ministry, our truth in time ministry. It's a good fit for churches, conferences, community events, meetings that you're having, Bible study groups, school, Christian schools. We would love to come and present some of these things we talk about on the podcast and sing. Our family loves to sing together. So contact us if we can be a help to you.

Jennifer:
Any of these topics that we talk about on the podcast are wonderful material for any Christian group or anybody learning about biblical history. And we would love to, and then share some of our family's music along the way as well.

Okay. Shifting focus again, we are moving into the anti-aging vitamins section of the podcast. As many of our listeners are aware, these two newly discovered vitamins have flowed out of the many decades of biblical research here. And they are making a difference in the lives of many people. Today, we have a testimonial from a special individual. His name is Alan Aardsma. You recognize that last name, right? He is the brother of Dr. Aardsma. And he sent some comments and he's a great encourager and supporter of the work here. We're thankful for him. And so Steve's going to share his testimonial. He is a very talented person himself and specializes in wood carvings. And so you need to know that about him as you hear his testimonial.

Steve:
Yes, Alan recently sent this testimonial in about his experience with Dr. Aardsma's anti-aging vitamins. And here's what he said. "I'll be 70 in less than two months, yet I am still fairly fit and trim. My vision and hearing are still excellent. I split and stacked this winter's firewood this past summer. I heal quickly from any cuts that I may get while working. I carve and paint critters all week with hands that work fine and with no arthritis. I do not know how much credit to give the Gerald's vitamins, but I do believe they must be playing some part in this."

Jennifer:
He sent that on October the 23rd a couple months ago. So he has turned 70 since then. He has a December birthday. So if you're listening to this, Uncle Alan, happy late birthday to you. And then he sent an additional comment on December the 4th. He describes how he was troubled by the growth of a brown blemish above his right eye for months and was asking the Lord to help him with that. One morning suddenly it was gone. And this is what he said. "Overnight it shrunk and faded away until only a faint discoloration remains. Answered prayer or Dr. Aardsma's vitamins or something else. He says, I have no definitive explanation." And of course we can't know, but it's always interesting to hear these kinds of things. And I will say he has also provided two, I believe it is, previous testimonials from a few years ago and a couple years before that. So you could go to the show notes and get linked over to read the previous things that he has said about his experience as pretty much a long-term user of Dr. Aardsma's anti-aging vitamins.

Steve:
Now also if you go to the show notes, you can see a picture of one of the beautiful carvings that Alan has done. Again, we call him Uncle Alan over here. And he is a fantastic carver, has a real talent in this. We put a picture of one of the fish that he's carved on the show notes. It's under this section, anti-aging vitamins testimonials. But you can go to ponsidestudio.net and look at all kinds of carvings that he's made and done. He does sell some, I believe. But just really beautiful things. God has given so many people so many different talents. Some work with scientific tools and instruments and others work with knives to create things that all redound to the glory of God. 

Jennifer:
That's right. Yes, do go look at the pictures of those gorgeous, beautiful carvings.

While we're on the topic of the anti-aging vitamins, we are having a sale, a New Year's sale for the month of January, the entire month. If you purchase two bottles, the cost will be 25% off of the normal cost of two bottles. You can go to the website there and see the price reduction for the two bottles. For a husband and wife couple, for example, one bottle will last about a month. If you take advantage of the sale, you'll get two bottles that'll last you about two months. We really want to encourage you to take advantage of this special pricing for the new year as you get going with your New Year's resolutions and staying healthy for the new year and maybe taking action on what's being offered to you here from the aging side of the research. Maybe you've thought about it and need to just go ahead and come on the website and place an order and get that as part of your routine every day.

Steve:
Okay. Turning the kaleidoscope one more time, we now have Helen's View. Helen, again, we mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast, is going to share something with us today that she actually wrote back in the mid-90s. Helen had a column for a number of years called The Mother's Companion. This was something she wrote to be an encouragement to other moms, to other women who were mothering and raising children. Many women were encouraged by that over the years. I'm thinking this is the first one she wrote. I may be wrong on that.

Jennifer:
It was very, very early on. Yeah. She wrote a number of different columns for her newsletter, which was called The Mother's Companion. This particular column was called At Our House. This was in '95. I'm pretty sure this was either the first or second of nine years that she spent publishing this publication.

Steve:
Yes. The storyline, this is her talking about their family's move from California, where Dr. Aardsma had been with the Institute of Creation Research, ICR, there in San Diego, and had left and moved to Illinois, and it's Helen's perspective that she wrote about their move.

Jennifer:
Exactly 29 years ago, because this was written in January of 1995. Here we are in January of 2024.

Steve:
All right. Here's Helen's view for this month.

Helen:
Well, we are on the move again. This will be our 10th move in 20 years of marriage. My husband is leaving his job of eight years at the Institute for Creation Research, ICR. He feels that God is calling him to start his own home-based ministry in biblical chronology, beginning January 1995. As I write, we are in the process of selling our house, which means keeping it clean to show to potential buyers, assessors, etc., packing, beginning the process of setting up our home business and looking for a new home near Urbana, Illinois. We are choosing the Urbana area for two reasons. First, my husband needs to be located close to a good library for his research. The University of Illinois located in Urbana has the third largest university library in the United States. Second, the University of Illinois is rurally situated. We hope to keep costs down for our large family by adopting a homesteading lifestyle. This is important as our income is expected to reduce drastically when we leave ICR. So at present, things are about as busy as they have ever been, with preparations for moving, added to the responsibilities of homeschooling, cooking for 10, cleaning house, and I might add nursing a new baby, doing the laundry, etc. We have had the flu in the middle of all this and now seem to be coming down with colds. This is probably at least partly due to the fact that we have not been getting a full night's sleep because we have been spending late hours talking about the decisions that need to be made. As my husband says, life for the Christian who is walking with the Lord is always an adventure.

I must admit I feel a bit overwhelmed at times. Elizabeth Elliott's advice, "Do the next thing," has proven valuable lately. If I think of all the things that need to be done, I rapidly get discouraged. But the Lord has given me much to rejoice about in the midst of the busy schedule and his supernatural hand has clearly been at work for us. I look forward to settling into a new home and making new friends when the move is over. Please pray for us. The adventure continues.

That is the end of the article that I wrote. I would just like to add here, it is always good to look back at God's faithfulness and how He has led us step by step over the 29 years we have been here in Illinois. I don't know what changes, uncertainties, or fears you are facing in 2024, but I do know this from Isaiah 41-13, "I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you." Blessing to you and yours, Helen.

Jennifer:
If you go to Helen's View in the show notes, you can see some pictures going down memory lane there from those many years ago and understand more about what she's describing.

Steve:
All right. As we close things out here, we wanted to give you one more comment from a listener. This is a listener from Illinois and simply said this, "Listening to the podcast..." So, this person sent this while she was listening, "I'm listening to the podcast. I'm always excited to get it. I also shared it in a group chat with my women's group. I forgot to mention, I love the podcast highlights that you guys put on the BC Messenger website." That was very encouraging.

Jennifer:
What she means there is the show notes, what we call them, the show notes, the highlights is what she said, they are enjoyable to go and look at the visual representation of everything that's being discussed.

Steve:
Right. As this individual said, we hope that you'll share this. Share this with people that you know. Maybe you have a group chat like this individual said or family, friends, those who you know might be benefited by what we're talking about here. Take advantage of our show notes. Maybe some of you listen solely through a podcast platform and you've never looked at the show notes. We encourage you to go look at those. There's a lot of information there, links to link to. 

Jennifer:
It can sound sort of like footnotes or something, but really what we have there is a very enjoyable newsletter, visual format, lots of pictures and many links as well.

Well, as we close this out, we are standing at the very beginning of a brand new year and we do not know what this new year is going to hold for any of us. You, as our listeners or us here working with The Biblical Chronologists, we don't know the future. It's sure to be a kaleidoscope, though, of various focal points. God's going to lead us along, you and your lives and us here on the adventure that He has for us, and many new chapters and new outlooks and scenes are going to come into view as we follow God's path for us in this new year.

Steve:
We hope you'll take the tools that God has given you, whatever they are, whatever skills, talents, abilities, tools, that you will take those out into this grand world that God has so graciously put us into and you'll discover His greatness and His goodness and you'll help to bring people into the kingdom of Christ, and be a benefit to your fellow man living for things higher than yourself. We hope that you'll be encouraged to do that in this coming new year.

Jennifer:
We will see you in February. Have a great start to your new year.