Lessons from Back to the Future

Today, October 21, 2015, is the day that Marty McFly, the hero of the popular 1989 movie Back to the Future Part II, arrives on after he travels to the future. Although we don’t yet have flying, time-traveling DeLoreans, or self-adjusting and drying clothes, we don’t know if the Chicago Cubs will win baseball’s World Series this month, and our hoverboards today can barely get off the ground, we at AiG do have a great time-traveling adventure in store for you.

In our online store we have a movie that features time travel but teaches an important lesson. This film, called Time Changer[/i], is set in 1890 and features a Bible professor looking to receive unanimous endorsement from the board for a new book he wrote. But one board member won’t endorse it because he believes the views in the book are dangerous for future generations. He then sends Carlisle into the 21st century to see where his ideas will lead. This movie is described as a humorous “conversation starter” on biblical authority and why it is so important that we stand on the authority of God’s Word without compromise. You can learn more about this faith-affirming movie.

Now, many secularists will argue against biblical creation by saying that we have a “time travel” problem. The supposed problem goes like this: there are some galaxies that are so far away it would take light from their stars billions of years to reach Earth. Now, they say, since we can see them, their light has already arrived here, and so the Earth can’t be only thousands of years old, it must be billions. But, creation astronomers and astrophysicists have researched this question and have posed several ways to explain it in a biblical worldview. You can read more about proposed solutions and assumptions inherent in the argument.

Actually, this is a poor argument to use for those who hold to the big bang to use because it’s self-refuting—they have a similar problem! You see, in the big bang model light has to travel farther than is possible in even 14 billion years. You see, according to the big bang model, at the beginning the universe would develop different temperatures in different places in the universe. But everywhere we measure, the universe has the same temperature—even in the most distant galaxies. In order for all of the different places of the universe to reach a uniform temperature, light had to be exchanged from one place to another. But, even in the supposed 14 billion years that those who hold to the big bang believe in, there hasn’t been enough time for light to travel from one side of the universe to the other. So for those who hold to the big bang to argue that biblical creation is wrong because of this “time travel” problem, they are really “shooting themselves in the foot” because their argument is self-refuting!

Although we can’t time travel like Marty McFly, we do know Someone who created everything and is outside of time and even created time, as stated in Genesis 1:1. Since we have the testimony of the Creator God of the universe, which is the written account of the history of the world, we can be confident that the things it says are true. His Word tells us how everything came to be, how sin entered into the world, and how Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the Cross takes away the penalty of that sin. It even tells us of the future glory of timeless heaven, for those who are Christians.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.