Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome to Science Conversations, a series examining the intersection of science and faith. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and my guest today is Dr.
John Ashton. This is my 12th conversation with Dr. Ashton based upon his book, Evolution in Possible Twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the origin of life on Earth.
Last time, Dr. Ashton reviewed the work of a number of scientists who believe. Today, Dr.
Ashton is going to explore evidence for the existence of an intervening God. Dr. Ashton is a chemist with a PhD in epistemology, a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge and truth.
Welcome, John. Hi, Barry. Good to be here.
John, we've been discussing the evidence from science throughout this series of conversations. We did look at some historical evidence for a universal flood and we're going back to history today. Why did you include this material in your book? Well, the claims of evolution and the Big Bang theory are essentially founded on the materialistic worldview or naturalism, and that is that the physical world is all that exists.
There's no spiritual world, there's no non material, other worlds and other minds. Now, to me, I was interested to see if in fact there was evidence that refuted this claim that the physical matter and energy that we see is all that exists. And so I was very interested to research this.
And I had thought about this and I thought, well, there are a number of accounts in history that I was aware of where people had premonitions that warned them of danger, of people that had dreams that revealed the future. And I thought this is very interesting because science essentially says that the world is chaotic, many things are random. And so if you look at chaos theory and this sort of thing, it's really impossible to know the future in any general sense.
Sure, we can predict the path of a satellite, maybe the trajectory of a missile, these sort of things in very simple physical systems, but if we in terms of knowing the future, what, something's going to happen in the future? There's no way we can predict this. And I think a classic example of this was in the film Sliding Doors where it showed a young woman racing down to catch a train and just as she got there, in one scenario, the door closed just as she got there and she couldn't get on the train. In the other scenario, she made it just in time and got on the train.
And it shows how, as a result of that simple fraction of a second decision to close the doors, two different outcomes occurred in her life. Her life went on two different paths. We know that these sort of decisions are being made all the time.
When we get to the traffic lights, do we go through or do we stop? How heavy did we put our foot on the accelerator? Did we overtake or not? Overtake that slow car. Whether or not we go through that intersection, somewhere down the road there might be a big semi trailer that we don't know. The brakes have failed.
It's coming at an intersection. The fact that we have were stopped by the lights means that we missed that truck. If we went through the lights, we may collide with that truck.
So we can see all these things are totally random. We can't know. And they're all around us all the time.
So how could anyone know the future? And I thought, well, it's very interesting. As I've read the Bible, the authors of the Bible make the claim that they got to know God and that God made the claim that he knows the future and can reveal the future. And that's one of the ways that we can know a that God exists and that he is very different from the other claimed Gods because he can know the future.
And so one of the things that I looked at was to research this. Now, as you know, I'm very interested in how we can know. I'm very interested in assumptions.
I'm very interested in what is the data telling us. So I decided to actually review this and look at the evidence for answers to prayer and miracles and other supernatural events like angels. Now, I decided to put it in this book because as I said, I'm looking at the evidence why evolution is impossible.
Now, if evolution is impossible, how did we come to be here? And what's the alternative explanation? And for me, the alternative explanation is that there was a creator God who supernaturally created matter and created all the systems, whether it's the solar systems and the galaxies and the systems of life on Earth as well. These are all created, but these are all designed by superintelligence. Now, if that superintelligence exists and the Bible claims that the authors of the Bible, and as I said, over 40 authors here claim that they have had communication with this creator.
So I thought, okay, what is the evidence? So first of all, I looked at some of the accounts within the Bible itself and then I looked at some of the accounts within secular history and I, in my view, found that again, there was overwhelming evidence of supernatural beings and interaction with a supernatural mind. So I guess to start somewhere, one of the amazing accounts that's in the Bible revolves around Nebuchadnezzar. Now, Nebuchadnezzar is a well known historical figure and he lived in what is now present day Iraq.
And he is famous for building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for his wife Amatus. And that was listed by Herodus as one of the Seven wonders of the ancient world. So we know quite a bit about this.
Now, the Bible records a book written by Daniel. Now, Daniel was an advisor in Nebuchadnezzar's court and there's a lot of historical evidence to support this. But I'll just first of all describe one of the accounts that Daniel describes.
Now, Daniel describes how Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, and this dream really startled him. Now, just digress here. When I've been doing my research on dreams, particularly precognitive dreams or premonitions, that revealed the future that came true, when I've interviewed the people, they've said when they had that dream, they knew that dream was something different, there was something special about this dream.
They had an intuition that that dream was special. It was telling them something in particular they needed to take notice of. And often that dream was repeated as well.
So it wasn't just a normal dream. They woke up, they had a good dream or a bad dream. There was when they woke up, they said, there's something significance in this dream.
Something is trying to tell me something. Now, it appears that Nebuchadnezzar had one of these experiences. He had the repeated dream, but when he woke up in the morning, he couldn't remember it.
But he knew that he'd had a significant dream. And the interesting thing is that he asked his wise men what to tell him what the dream was and what it meant. And I mean, that was the custom of those times.
They had astrologers and this sort of thing. And certainly they were heavily into dreams. And these guys said, well, okay, tell us what the dream is.
And Nebuchadnezzar a very smart man, nebuchadnezzar, he built the Babylonian Empire. And he said, well, hang on, if you guys are real, I want you to tell me what I dreamt. Then I know you can tell me the interpretation.
And that's very clear because a lot of people claim that they can see the future and this sort of thing, well, that was a pretty good test. And of course, none of them can do it. And so the king got a bit angry.
And you're on my payroll here, I think, under false pretenses, if you can't tell me what my dream was. But Daniel, of course, being one of the wise men, even though he was a young trainee, I suppose, at the time, was under this death sentence. And he decided to pray to God.
He was a believer, he was a Hebrew. He believed in God, and he prayed to God. And God revealed to him the dream.
And he had that revelation in his mind of what Nebuchadnezzar dreamt and what it meant. And he was able to go to the king and say, king, God has revealed to me what you dreamt, and I will tell you what it is. And he told Nebuchadnezzar, and the book records that Nebuchadnezzar says, Right, that's it.
That's what I dreamt. What does it mean? And people can read this for themselves in the Book of Daniel. And I think many people don't read the Book of Daniel.
It's in chapter two of the Book of Daniel. But it's a really amazing account when we think that Nebuchadnezzar lived 600 BC. I think he first conquered Jerusalem 605 BC.
Something like that. Second siege of Jerusalem, I think was 580. So 5600 years before Christ, just after.
This is the period when Daniel is obviously writing this book, so at least 500 years old. And what Nebuchadnezzar had dreamt was of a statue of a man with a head of gold, a chest of silver, thighs or lower section of brass, and then legs of iron and feet of iron and clay. And then he saw this giant rock that came from out of nowhere and it smashed into the feet of the statue and the statue was destroyed.
And then that rock grew to become the whole earth sort of thing. So this is a very different dream, you can understand. And it's interesting what Daniel said.
Daniel said he said, Nebuchadnezzar, you and your kingdom is essentially the head of gold. You're going to be followed by another kingdom that's inferior like silver is inferior to gold, that's going to be followed by another kingdom that is represented by the brass, which is going to be inferior again, but stronger then that kingdom is going to be followed by another kingdom that is really strong like iron. And then that kingdom will be divided into a number of smaller kingdoms that will be like a mixture of iron and clay and they will never combine.
And then God will come and destroy all those kingdoms and set up his kingdom. So this is an outline prophecy of the world. Well, in looking back it is.
In looking back it is. I mean, there were subsequent dreams that revealed more characteristics about the but this was the big outline one. But this was the big outline one.
And when we look down through history, I mean, that's exactly what happened. The Babylonian empire. We know Babylon fell to the Persians.
General Gobius came in, he diverted the river you phrase, that was flowing in there and supplying the water to the hanging gardens. He diverted the river so that he could march his troops in under the walls where the river normally flowed, and he captured Babylon when they thought it could not be captured, the capital city. And then of course, we know that the Persian Empire fell to Alexander the Great, and we then know that the Greek Empire, alexander's Empire, slowly fell to the Roman Empire.
And it's interesting, just there are two legs. The Roman Empire ended up divided in east and west, one capital Rome, one capital Constantinople. And then as that empire broke up after 400 Ad or thereabouts, we know that it divided into the kingdoms which have subsequently become Europe.
And we know since that time, 450 Ad or thereabouts, the empire's never been, europe has never been united, even with the so called formation of the EU, the European Union, Switzerland, Abstained, there are different countries that have remained independent and of course, we've got major problems now, and we know down it's interesting, too. The interpretation was back 500 years ago that they would try to unite through marriage and other different ways, but it would never succeed. So the prophecy is quite detailed now, when we consider that we're looking at something that was written two and a half thousand years ago, that's 500 BC.
And it has outlined the history of the world up to the present time in that part of Europe there, where the gospel was first preached and originated from. I think that is, to me, pretty amazing evidence. The fact that the prophecy was so accurate led people to say, well, the Book of Daniel couldn't have been written in the 6th century BC.
It had to be written closer to the time of Christ, so they say the second century BC. But there's evidence that there's clear evidence in a number of lines. We can't spend time on it now, but there's evidence from the time of Alexander the Great that indicates that he knew about Daniel's book.
Can you tell us about well, there's lots of evidence, sure. Well, we can talk about the Alexander the Great. And this is another very interesting dream.
In that Herodias, the Greek historian that lived a couple hundred years BC, he wrote that Alexander had, when he was a boy, had a dream where this man appeared to him dressed in a fairly strange way and said to him, Come over here. God is giving this to you. And he was pointing over there to Mesopotamia.
And so Alexander knew from this young man, I think he was in his late teens, he saw this as he was going to grow up to be a successful conqueror, and he indeed was. He came down, as I said, he defeated the Persians there, 331 BC. I think it was, and came in and conquered the land.
Now, it's very interesting that when Alexander was coming through, coming to marching towards Jerusalem, he conquered Tyre and so forth. And that was another quite famous prophecy, really, with regard to Tyre, that it would be pulled down and thrown into the sea and the fishermen would hang their nets on it. Now, here's Tyre as sort of an inland city.
Now, there was a fortress on a little island just offshore. But, I mean, that's a really strange prophecy. In actual fact, when Alexander was marching down, the people fled out to their island fortress, and so he demolished the city and used the stones to build a causeway out to march his seas equipment out and take the so that's a pretty amazing prophecy that was written before.
But when Alexander the Great was coming towards Jerusalem, judaiah, who was the priest in charge there, was aligned with Darius, and he had an agreement, a peace agreement with him. And he told Alexander, he said, I'm going to be faithful to that agreement. And Alexander said, well, you know what we do to people that don't cooperate with us.
And so Judaiah got all the people to pray, and Judaiah had a dream, and God revealed to him, he said, when you see Alexander approaching, we'd like you to march out, get all the people to wear the robes that they wear when they go to the temple. I want the priests to go ahead blowing their trumpets, and you go ahead in front of the priests and open the gates of the city and march out singing towards Alexander. And it's interesting.
So this is Herodotus, a secular Greek historian, recording this that when Alexander drew closer, who was at the head of his army with his troops marching behind, he dismounted, halted his troops, dismounted, walked up to Judaya and bowed down. Now, that's amazing. So here you have this man who is just conquering all the nations, and he goes and bows down to the priest, because this man, Judah was dressed as the man was dressed in his dream.
And so this is a really, really amazing coincidence. And one of the things that the priests then said, they said, well, we want to be able to keep the Sabbatical year every 7th year. We don't plow and harvest that year, so we want to be exempt from taxes that year.
And Alexander gave them exemption for taxes on the year and treated them very kindly. And that's one of the reasons, when you read with Alexander's conquest, jerusalem wasn't know. That's an amazing piece of history there that supports that.
But the other aspect with regard to Babylon itself is I think that you have Herodotus, or I might have been one of the other historians recorded that a somewhat debauched man was a debauched king, lived in Babylon when Gobius took the city, but he doesn't name the king. And so historians, up until the 18 hundreds, there were no record of who the king was in Babylon at that time. And the Bible said that it was Beltashazza Belshazza rather.
And then subsequently in the 18 hundreds, they found these documents that showed that Belshazza was the name of the king in Babylon, just exactly as Daniel had recorded in the Bible, even though the Greek historians in the era 200 BC. Didn't record the name of the king there. So there's a lot of other evidence that we've had since that time that would substantiate.
Yes, a much earlier writing of Daniel so fulfilled prophecy is very clear evidence that something supernatural is going on. So you have to make a choice then as to what part of supernatur is being involved here. Well, that's true.
Is there good and evil supernatural beings? And I think the Bible certainly talks about that there are demons, that there are very evil supernatural beings, and that there are very good supernatural beings. And a number of Christian authors too, christian psychologists have written that there's a battle for the mind, there's a battle for the human mind. I mean, that's a little bit off topic, what we're talking about here today.
But one of the things that I was looking at down through history was from ancient times, there were accounts of people seeing the future ahead of time, and some of these details were in great detail. Jesus himself said, I think it's in John 1429, I've told you beforehand so that when it comes to pass, you might believe. In other words, the reason for prophecy is not just to titillate our imaginations, but to help us to come to belief.
And also, I'm sure, to prepare us for the future. There have been occasions when it's important for God's people to know what the future holds. So it's quite clear that if you get fulfilled prophecy, then God's trying to tell us that this should help us to believe.
Well, I mean, there's the prophecies of Jesus himself that are recorded there. One of the prophecies that Jesus said was, Look, I tell you. And he pointed to Herod's Temple, which was an amazing building.
I mean, the remains of the foundation are there. In the Wailing Wall, we have these huge stones that are there. And Jesus said, Look, I tell you, not 1 st will be left upon another.
And that's him. Why would it be? Now, it's very interesting. During the seas of Jerusalem, when the Roman soldiers got in under Titus, titus had given instructions to his commanders, don't destroy the temple.
I mean, it was a beautiful piece of architecture. But what happened was, in the foray, as the Jews had retreated to the temple and were fighting very fiercely, a fire stick was thrown through one of the openings into the temple area, the enclosed temple area. And, of course, it was lined with timber and curtains, and it caught fire and began fighting and caught up.
And Titus actually asked his soldiers to stop fighting and help fight the fire. Bring water about. The Jews.
Unfortunately, many of them trapped inside, that they were going to die, but they continued to fight and hamper the firefighting attempts to put out the fire by the Roman soldiers. And of course, the Roman soldiers weren't too happy about that either. They reacted and actually disobeyed Titus and then continued to fight.
Now, the temple, of course, was lined with much gold as well, and that melted. And so when the whole thing cooled down, it's understood that the soldiers just turned 1 st over another, looking for the melted gold that had run down into the cracks. So it's a pretty unusual sort of prophecy, but we saw it fulfilled, and, of course, heaps of Jesus prophecies were fulfilled.
Let's go outside of the Bible. Now, are there any instances where people have heard voices or received prophecies that have actually come true? I know that you use Joan of Ark in your book. The reason I used Joan of Arc was because her trial about her claims of hearing voices and seeing things in light and so forth is well recorded.
And psychologists have studied the court trials, recordings, and they've been attempted to explain this behavior in terms of her mental illness. Some people, of course, have been concerned that I've included Joan of Arc in here because she's a Catholic saint. But of course, she was only made a saint sometime later.
So we have really good evidence, historical evidence still preserved about what was happening back then. Now, when you think here was this 17 year old girl who was put in charge of the French army at a time when women were very much subjugated by men is really amazing. And when we look into it, there are a number of claims about Joan of Arc.
She was a very spiritual girl, a very pious girl that was recognized within the community from an early age. She claimed to hear these voices which she believed was God or an angel talking to her. And then she saw these beings in bright light that talked to her and they gave her specific directions about things.
Now, one of the things that she was told to do was to go and see the king, to do a presentation to him. Now, at that time, there was a war between England and France. There was a dispute over the kingship of France and the heir of the king of France, the Dauphin, had not been crowned because the English troops were occupying the traditional town of Rhames, where the kings were crowned and were laying siege to the city of Orleans.
And the king had been praying to God for somehow God to intervene. And Joan of Ark asked for an audience with the king. And of course, she was questioned about this, and she said, Well, I can tell the king what his prayers were.
And so the king allowed her to come in and she was able to tell the king what he had been praying. And because of that, he put her in charge of the army. Now, that's a historical fact that Joan of Art was given command of the army.
Secondly, following the instructions by the angels, she was extremely successful in lifting the siege of Orleans and leading the French armies and the king to reims where he was crowned and liberating France. Now, when you read some of the transcripts of her replies to the questions, now she was examined by the clerics from the University of Paris. That's where she was tried.
And I can't remember offhand her quotes, I've tried to remember them and I must practice them better. But her replies were absolutely brilliant. They stunned her prosecutors.
Her ability to answer her questions and remain loyal to God, when you read them, you can see, wow, this was no common person that was speaking here. And she was true to her claims that God was spoken to her right up to the point of death. She died rather than recant.
She was that faithful. So that was obviously a very, very real experience to her. And she had a prediction.
She was told that she would die on a particular day, that she would be or she would be captured on a particular day. And that came true. That's a very interesting case, Joan of Arc.
And people can look up the historical records, the accounts of the trial, the records that were kept of the trial and judge for themselves. But here we have a very prominent historical figure that certainly defies the times. But there's another interesting situation here.
See, when I was researching and there are a number of dreams like this. For example, Abraham Lincoln had a dream where he saw himself after the assassination attempt lying on a table. And he told friends about that just before he had the dream prior to his he had the dream prior to his assassination? Yes, obviously.
Another interesting account is described by the famous author Mark Twain. When he was a young person, he was working with his brother on the paddle steamers going up the rivers in America. And he had this really, really vivid dream where he saw his brother in a steel coffin and he thought it was in his sister's room.
And there on the coffin were bouquet of red roses and white roses. And this was a really, really vivid dream. And he told his sister about it.
He was really concerned about it, what it meant. Now, six months or a year later, the boy, he and his brother, who normally worked together on same paddle steamer, were separated. And his brother was on a paddle steamer, I think was called the Philadelphia, and the boilers blew up and there was huge casualties and really severe burns.
And his brother was one of the people that was really, really severely injured and he didn't die till ten days after the accident. And the young women in the town were so impressed with this young man, struggled to survive, and he nearly made it, but then he died that they put in together and bought him a steel coffin. And by the time Mark Twain arrives and he writes that when he got there, the room wasn't in his sister's home as he thought was in the dream.
It was actually in a public hall in the town where there were a lot of bodies waiting to be buried. He was there in the hall and there were white roses on the coffin. And he remembered in his dream there were red and white roses.
And while he was sitting there, a lady came in and put a bouquet of red roses on the coffin. Now, I collected lots of stories like this and I could talk for ages on this. But what I decided to do was I thought I'll do an experiment because I'm very interested in data.
I'm very interested in experiment. Can I reproduce this? So at the time, I was chief chemist for Santorium, and we had a large research facility employing about 100 people, over 100 people, actually, including engineers, food technologists, chemists, and so forth. And I thought, what I will do is I'll do a survey among the staff here of people who have had precognitive dreams.
And there were a number of people who'd had precognitive. When you say precognitive, what do you what I mean is a dream revealing the future in detail. So they had this dream well ahead of time that revealed the future in detail.
Now, one of those actually involved one of my staff. So there were twins that were working in our research. One of the twins, Paul, worked in the food technology division, and the other twin, Steven, worked for me in the chemistry analytical division.
And what had happened was, when the boys were at school, because they were twins, they're in the same class. Paul had had a dream, and in this dream, he saw himself walking along next to Stephen, who was in a stretcher, and he was being pushed out by ambulance officers, and Paul was walking with him. And just at that moment, they were passing the school auditorium, where there was a physical education class in.
And as he looked over the dado board into the window into the classroom, there was a girl that he knew who looked up, saw him smile and wave because she couldn't see the stretcher down below the dado board. And so that was the dream. Now, about six months later, a young man went berserk during a metalwork class.
And in the mayhem, stephen was knocked over and severely hit his head against a piece of equipment, was knocked unconscious. The ambulance was called. Paul stayed with him.
And as they were wheeling Stephen out, he just had this sense of, I've seen this before. And he realized that they were just walking past the gymnasium. And as he looked into the gymnasium, there was the girl who saw him, looked up, smiled, and so that's pretty cool.
And he know that everlasting impression. And so here are the two guys worked for us. Then there was another girl who told the story of her father.
And this is similar to the one with Joan of Ark, where it was revealed to her when she was dialed. Now, her father was a builder. He was working in New Guinea for a church organization.
And one night, he had a really, really vivid dream where an angel showed him the books of his life and that this was the end of his life. And he noticed that there were only a few pages left, but he didn't know how. He couldn't remember how many pages there were.
And he told his wife about this. But then a few years later, he had the dream again, and this time, the angel showed him the book. There.
Was only one page left. And he told his wife and he saw all his children and told them they loved him and told them about the dream and this sort of thing. And it was some months later, when he was working on a volunteer building program in the Solomon Islands, I think it was, that he was accidentally killed in a building accident.
So that was another interesting scenario there. Tell me about Dr. Merlene Spear.
So Dr. Spear is a local medical physician that works in the local suburb, or used to work in the local suburb here. And when I was talking to her one day, she said, oh, I've had quite a few experiences.
One that was really stood out to me was as a young medical officer, a registrar, up at a hospital at Wingham. I was driving from where I lived down near Tarue up to Wingham, up the windy mountain road by myself in my car, when suddenly I heard this really musical voice from behind saying, Pull over and stop. And she said, I just couldn't help but say, I beg your pardon.
She'd been brought up with manners, obviously, and the voice repeated, Pull over and stop. And she was just absolutely terrified. She didn't know whether it was somebody in the car, but she said she had well, when I say she obeyed, but she said she had this sense of peace, that she wasn't in danger from someone being in the car.
But it was really strange. She pulled over and just at that moment that she pulled over, a yellow Ford Mustang sports car came round this blind corner at high speed on the wrong side of the road. And she said if she hadn't pulled over at that time, she would have suffered very serious injury, if not killed.
And she said it was as clear to me, she said, I can remember that. She said it was an audible, musical voice. And she said, and I obeyed.
So there are a lot of people have these sort of experiences. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and you're listening to science conversations.
My guest is Dr. John Ashton, author of Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. John has been exploring evidence for the existence of an intervening god.
We'll go to a break now. When we come back, John will examine more evidence for an intervening god. If you have any questions or comments in relation to today's program, you can call Three ABM, Australia radio within Australia on 024-97-3456, or from outside of Australia on country code 6124-973-3456.
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Morissette, New South Wales 2264, Australia thank you for your prayers and financial support. If you've just joined us. I'm Dr.
Barry Harker and you're listening to science conversations. My guest is Dr. John Ashton, author of Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth.
John has been exploring evidence for the existence of an intervening god and he's going to continue doing this for the remainder of our program. John, were there any other stories that came out of your research? Oh, yes, there were several other accounts from the staff in the lab. From memory, I think there were about five people that came forward.
So that was about roughly 5% of the people at the laboratory had had these experiences. One of the other ones that I recorded in the book Evolution Impossible was from Joe, one of the staff in the engineering department. And he told me that about ten years earlier he'd lived up in the north coast of New South Wales and he was a keen surfer, used to go surfing in the Ballina area.
And he had a dream where in this dream he saw himself swimming out and he saw a shark in the water. And then after that the dream switched to he was at a gathering of church folk and they were by a river and they were standing on the edge of the river. And there were a group of young people standing in there.
And then suddenly one of the girls who was standing on the bank of the river slipped and fell into the river. It wasn't a fast moving river, it was a still river. And people were all standing there waiting for her to come back up out of the water.
But she didn't come back up out of the water near the bank. She came up out of the water further over near the center of this wide river. And as she came out of the water she was wearing a white robe and there, there appeared a bearded man also in a white robe who took her hand and she walked away smiling with the man.
And then the dream ended. So it was a really, really strange piece, said, powerfully, vivid dream. Now, a few weeks later, before going to church, he decided to get up early and go surfing with a friend.
And when they went out surfing on this particular morning they saw two sharks and they decided to come in. It's interesting, just recently in the news, Barry We've had several shark attacks up in that same area. And he came in and he thought, yeah, that was a bit scary.
And they cut short their surfing trip, then went home, got ready and went to church. When they got to church they found that that night the young lady that he had seen in the dream had been killed in a car accident during the night. And that sort of to him explained that was in his dream, the young lady falling into the water.
And so these dreams there's another one too, actually. When I was beginning to work on this chapter, when I was just in the local church where I attend, an older man stood up and told a story about when he was a boy, he was visiting his grandmother's place and he and some other children were other cousins. His cousin, he was playing with his cousins, and Grandma was looking after them.
And he can remember she was doing some washing on the old washing board and suddenly she dropped what she was doing and raced over and grabbed this inflated tractor tie that the children were playing with and she ran off down the road. Now, they live, whatever it was, half a kilometer away or more from the sea, and she ran off. They didn't know what was happening, but what they later found out was that as she was doing her washing, she looked down and in the water of the tub of water that was next to her, it was almost as if she saw a vision of her husband drowning.
And she immediately had known that he'd gone fishing that morning down on one of the brake walls. And she raced down there, and there he was. He'd actually been swept off the brake wall into the water, and he was struggling to stay afloat because he wasn't a really good swimmer.
And she was able to throw that tractor tire to the man, to her husband, and he was able to keep afloat then until some other nearby fishermen were able to get close enough to rescue him. So that was just something on the spur of the moment that came up there. Another one was told to me by a Lady Joy, who had served for a long time in a number of positions in Africa, particularly in ministry positions for the church and encouraging women, these sort of things.
And she tells a very interesting story that was told by a young lady that came to see her. This young woman had driven home and parked her car in the driveway with her little girl in the back and had gone in to open the gate. But she'd made the mistake of leaving the car running.
Now, at that time, there were a lot of carjackings going on and cars were being stolen. This occurred in Zimbabwe, were being stolen and driven across the border and being sold. And there was a man hiding behind some bushes.
And when she'd hopped out of the car and left the car running with him, he had just jumped up, immediately jumped into the car and had driven off with her little girl. And she was just so frantic. Then.
It was a Peugeot car, had a full, near full tank of fuel, I understand, a fairly new car, in good condition, and she was just absolutely frantic and she just began screaming on the road. Now, another man drove along, came along and saw her and said, what's happened? And she said, Someone's carjacked might stolen my car. My daughter's in it.
And they've headed that way and they had a general idea that they'd head out to the main highway, which was the main highway off to another country. And so he said, well, look, I'll give chase. And the lady continued to scream.
She didn't know what was happening. And another man pulled up and he said to her, well, lady, well, look, would you like to hop in and we can give chase? And she was very reluctant. She didn't know this man.
But she looked down and she saw that there was a Bible on the front passenger seat. And the man saw her look and see the Bible. And he said, look, he said, I'm a minister of religion.
Let's pray. Let's pray that the Lord will stop the car. And so they prayed and then they gave chase out along this road.
And after a few kilometers, they came to the car stopped on the side of the road and the little girl standing with the first man that had given chase. And when the little girl was questioned, she said, well, I was driving on Long and I was pleading with the man to stop the car to please stop the car and take me back to my mummy when she said. Suddenly I saw what was like an angel landed on the bonnet of the car and pushed what was like a sword down into the engine.
And the car stopped and the man jumped out of the car and ran off. Now, of course, when they looked at the car, there was no hole in the bonnet or anything like that, but what they found was the clutch had failed. So I don't know, did the little girl make up the story or what? But anyway, the bottom line is the car stopped.
But it's interesting because these stories, when we read the New Testament and the Book of Acts, there are lots of stories of answers to prayer. There are lots of stories of miracles, angels leading Paul out of prison, this sort of thing. And we know that the journey of Paul was real.
It's been verified by historical accounts and these sort of things, we have so much evidence there. So these accounts and there are so many of them if you read the Christian literature, there's thousands of these accounts of people, extraordinary events that happened. And these are honest people.
These are real experiences that happened. They're real answers. Prayer.
Another one, just quickly, I guess a close friend of mine that often went camping with one time we were sitting around a fire and he was saying how he and his wife had just become Christians and they were living up in Townsville, a city up in North Queensland. And they were so excited about becoming Christians that his wife decided to take some Christian books over to her sister who lived a couple hundred kilometers inland. And so one morning she sent off to do this.
Now, just prior to this, my friend Mike told me that he had had this repetitive dream. He hadn't told his wife about it, but in this dream, he saw his wife driving along the car, going round this corner on the car, and the dream just suddenly stopped. And so he saw his wife driving on this road, the same road that she would be going on to visit her sister.
She's driving along, she comes up to this corner and then the dream just stops. He doesn't know what happens then, but his dream just stops on this corner. And he remembers that it was this unusual shaped corner.
And he said in his dream, he said it was really weird, he said, because he had this really strong smell of onion grass. He said, there was this really strong smell in my dream. And he said, Anyway, it's interesting.
He said, I didn't tell anyone about this dream, but he said I had it two or three times and it was really like, strong, he said, very unusual. Anyway, when his wife Marie was due to come back, she hadn't returned, so Mike rang his brother in law and he said, well, Marie left some hours ago. And Mike then remembered, he said, well, she hasn't arrived, know, and the guys worked out, well, she should have arrived home.
And that was when Mike told his brother in law. He said, well, look, I've had this dream, it's this particular corner shaped like that. And he says, really strong smell of onion grass.
And his brother said, I know where that is. And they called an ambulance and they went out. He was able to describe where the corn was and it was on a section of road where the road banked heavily, say, to the right and then dropped off to the left.
And what had happened was Marie's car had actually rolled on the corner, had rolled over the bank, and because of the angle of the road, it was actually totally out of sight. And being an outback Australian road, nobody saw it happen. And Mike said the ambulance officer said when they found Marie, her head was jammed between her chest and the steering wheel in such a position that they said, know, another hour, half an hour, an hour and she would have died.
So there is where a dream ahead of time helped my friend Mike save his wife's life. So when we look at that, there's historical dreams, like the Banting that discovered insulin. He had a dream about the pancreas.
So you're telling me scientists have dreams too? Yes. The guy that thought of the periodic table I won't attempt to pronounce the Russian name. I'm not very good with those sort of names.
He essentially had it revealed to him in a dream. The major BP oil fields in Kuwait were discovered as a result of a dream. The geologist over there had believed that they would find oil there.
And they'd raised shares after shares, funding after funding to do their drilling. And they drilled and drilled and drilled and they hadn't found any oil. And they'd essentially given up.
And he had this amazing dream where this lady showed him where he would find treasure in this dream. In his dream, he saw this particular landforms and he managed to convince a few investors to support him this last time and he went and drilled where he saw the formations in his dream. As I said, I've recorded these details in my book, the 7th Millennium.
They've been recorded by other psychologists in university studies. They've studied, recorded dreams and so forth. And that's where they found discovered, I think, was the Kuwait oil fields were discovered.
So, yes, there's a number of archaeological discoveries have been made as a result of revelations of dreams. Some of these recognitions have almost been official in some of the records where they've acknowledged them. Tell me about the battle of the Mons in Belgium in 1914 and the angel intervention.
Yes, for sometimes this account is disputed, but there were a number of accounts that have been reported. In August 1914, during the First World War, the British people were actually called to a national day of prayer. And we forget that that back then many people went to church, many people believed in God and people responded and they went and they prayed because the Allied forces were under tremendous pressure from the German force.
There was massive loss of life and it looked like that the Allied Army in Mons was going to be wiped out. And so they'd actually called for this special day of prayer. On the 23rd and 24 August in 1914, the British Army was greatly outnumbered and in fact, defeat was so imminent that it's understood that the Times newspaper correspondent who was reporting on the war prematurely telegraphed the news that the British Army had been annihilated.
But in actual fact, the next day news came that the disaster had actually been averted by a miraculous turn of events involving angels. And there were a number of testimonies by both British and German officers where the German soldiers saw that there were British cavalry, that there were far more greater forces there and they turned around and retreated, when in actual fact there weren't. And so that's why it's called the Angels of Mons.
So a number of counts for particular soldiers reported that they saw beings, some saw beings in between protecting them and on the other side they saw them as sort of warriors advancing on them. So it's very interesting, but the bottom line is the prayers were answered, the British Army was saved. Now, we know that there have been some premonitions around disasters like the mine disaster in Wales back in the also the sinking of the Titanic.
Can you briefly cover those couple? Yes, certainly. I think it's important to recognise that studies have been made of a number of these important disaster events, like the Aberphan Mineslag disaster. And like one of the professors of mathematics at the University of London did studies into this because he was very interested in the evidence for the supernatural.
And it's interesting that a number of those children before the mind disaster was very religious town, came home and told their parents, mummy, it's okay, I know I'm going to be with Jesus soon, you don't have to worry about me. And a couple of days later, of course, the whole slag heap slid down the hill and 176 teachers and children were killed in that disaster. But there were at least 23 corroborated accounts of premonitions beforehand.
So that is where there's a person had it and the other person witnessed them telling that they had this premonition of something really, really bad going to happen. And so that's very, very powerful evidence. How can people know the future there again with the Titanic psychologists, again, a number of people had detailed premonitions.
The Titanic. Actually there was a book written before the Titanic sank. A retired merchant navy officer, Morgan Robinson, 14 years before the Titanic sailed, wrote a book called Futility and it was published in 1898.
And the story revolved around a huge, supposedly unsinkable passenger ship fitted with 19 watertight compartments. And it was called the Titan. And it featured watertight doors which closed automatically.
And because the ship was deemed unsinkable, it carried only minimum number of lifeboats required by law. And with 2000 people on board, the Titan was attempting a record crossing when its starboard hull was severely pierced as a result of a collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Only two boatloads of survivors were rescued with a vast loss of life.
So this is story, this is a published story, right? Matter of fact, I have a copy of it at home. It was published in 1898 by M. F.
Mansfield in New York. And this story is an amazingly accurate in prophetic detail. Even the name Titan is a close to the Titanic name, Titanic.
So that's amazing that's written there. Now, where do these ideas come from? And this is the interesting thing. Where do the things in our mind come from? And the Nobel Prize winner in the area of physiology, Sir John Eccles, pointed out one of the things is how can my mind interact with matter? And we know we can think with our mind a non material thing and move our little finger.
And I think the fact that we have these prophecies, the fact that we have these premonitions and there's heaps more. I wrote a whole book on it called the 7th Millennium and I've documented it to the references in literature. That powerful evidence that there is another, greater mind that communicates with our mind.
And to me that explains the prophecies in the Bible, why they're all so accurate. It explains how people can know the future. And I think it's powerful evidence for an intervening god.
Thanks, John. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and you've been listening to science conversations.
My guest is Dr John Ashton, author of Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. John has been exploring evidence for the existence of an intervening god. Next week will be my last conversation with Dr ashton in this series, at least John is going to tell me his personal story of faith.
Don't miss it. Bye for now, and God bless.
