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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Those dates aren't guesses, Go-B. Everything fits, from the history told by rocks, or the billions of light years to the furthest Galaxies. The light from those Galaxies left them billions of years ago.
It isn't just palontology. It is also Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, you name it.
I read an interesting paper the other day. The author specifically called out a creationist who had incorrectly interpreted his data.
It was about the Liscomb Bone Bed, a Cretaceous Dinosaur bone bed located in northern Alaska, well north of the Arctic Circle. The creationist said that the bones hadn't been fossilized. Fossilization is the process whereby the original bone chemicals are replaced by rock minerals, such as Silica or Calcium Carbonate. The only true ancient bones are things such as mammoths that regularly thaw out of the permafrost in Siberia or other Arctic area.
The author went out of his way to describe the chemical replacement, and note that the bones weren't frozen freshly in permafrost.
Arctic dinosaurs are a fascinating question. There are beds in Australia that were close to the south pole at the time of deposition. How do we know this?
When magnetic minerals lithify in a rock, be it igneous or sedimentary, the minerals act like little compass minerals, and show latitude. There was a period of about 25 years where paleomag techniques were used all over the world, and through that, a clear picture of how continents have wandered around through time becomes apparent. It isn't magic, and it is very successful. For a basic picture of how the continents have wandered through time, see Blakey.
Anyway, during the time of deposition, the site was even closer to the North Pole than it is now. It was a warm period, but the area still underwent months of darkness in the winter. The plants couldn't move, but perhaps the animals migrated. Nobody really knows. It is a great question. However, the bones aren't fresh, and merely frozen. That is a lie, and Creationist websites have latched onto this, saying that the bones are freshly frozen. They are not.
Here are some Creationist websites that directly lie about the mineralization of the Liscomb Bone Bed in Alaska:
http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/alaska/trip-jul18.html
http://creation.com/unpermineralized-hadrosaur-bones-alaska
Here is a website that says that dinosaurs coexisted with man:
http://www.creationsciencefiction.com/did-dinosaurs-coexist-with-man
The bones HAVE been replaced by minerals, like all fossils:
https://books.google.com/books?id=iriTYIpQV4IC&pg=PA85-IA3&lpg=PA85-IA3&dq=liscomb+bone+bed+mineralization&source=bl&ots=Q0rRyKo45v&sig=pZHb_9llqlLU2eRla5I4iiPReik&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGw6f4o8nPAhWMGD4KHbPSAG0Q6AEIPTAF#v=onepage&q=liscomb%20bone%20bed%20mineralization&f=false
Here is a case where Christians deliberately lie.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Here is a fine description of how paleomagnetism is used by geologists to unravel the history of wandering continents and subcontinents:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleomagnetism
Fluid inclusions in Zircons are now probably the gold standard in radiometric dating. U-Pb ratios give very accurate dates.
Again, Wiki has a nice summary of the process and accuracy of U-Pb dating. Pay attention to the part about Zircons:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93lead_dating
There are a number of radiometric techniques, but the Zircon method is the most accurate. The downside is that while Zircon crystals are fairly common in granitic igneous rocks, they are almost totally absent from basaltic igneous rocks.
Continents are basically rafts of Granitic rocks which "float" on the denser mantle beneath. Oceanic rocks, created by mid-ocean rifts, are basaltic, and much thinner than continental rocks. When you have a convergent plate boundary, the thinner and heavier oceanic rocks are pushed beneath the granitic continental rocks in a process known as subduction. We see this happening around the Pacific rim.
There is very little preserved oceanic crust older than Cretaceous. It tends to be devoured in subduction zones.
There are a number of ways to date rocks, though, and we just don't see huge discrepancies in different methods. What does change is the + - error factor.
Using Zircons, geologists have been able to study crustal rocks and see how cratons were assembled. It is like a jig-saw puzzle, but it is possible to sort it all out, if you have outcrops. If you don't have outcrops, you can still get data from deep oil and gas wells.
I look at rocks of differing ages every single day. It is old hat. There is no raging debate over the ages of most rock units. The only controversies are relatively minor.
Nobody can honestly look at the data as a whole and come to the conclusion that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. There is no controversy. That work has been carried out all over the world, as people date various rocks under study.
These days, I spend a few hours each afternoon straightening out a huge palynology collection, assigning dates to thousands of samples. If I know what rock unit the sample was collected from, and the collector almost always noted this, I can assign a geologic date to each sample.
I can do a hundred samples each day. A lot of the collection comes from coals, so I use detailed stratigraphy of the cycles to come up with a date.
To be blunt, geologists almost never discuss a rock unit it terms of years. We use periods, such as Paleozoic, Permian, Leonardian, to date a sample.
Gotta run. Have to date a couple of hundred samples today. It will take me a couple of months to date the entire collection.
In my case, the host rock names on the samples are pretty well known. There are few cases where I need to go in and change an error, but I run into at least several each day. The Paleozoic stratigraphy of the mid continent area is very well known, from their presence in deep sedimentary basins, where they can easily be correlated to. Since the rocks have huge economic implications, they have had the snot worked out of them. There are almost no disagreements in this area.
The Paleontology, radiometric dating, and stratigraphy of these rocks has already been done. Further work still goes on.
I've found several volcanic ash samples in the collection. Volcanic ash is easy to date, so there is a paper right there. Volcanic ash is not common in this area, so the relative dates might be refined by dating the 4 ash beds that I've found in the collection.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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God is Eternal = lasting or existing forever; without end or beginning.
...That's hard to comprehend!
John 17:1 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, 2 even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. 3 This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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^^^ "I don't mind dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Base: Everything fits, . . . .
Close, . . . but not exactly.
If everything did fit, then there’d be no questions—but there are plenty of those. Questions are the signs that there are "things" that aren’t quite explained. Nothing is.
This is a typical problem for consensus reality and most people’s minds. The assumption that things are what others say they are is rarely (never, really) examined closely, and those assumptions become reified, concrete. Moreover, folks are inclined to defend-to-the-death (of their own egos) those assumptions and claims made by others.
This is how we all end up in a concrete and serious reality that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t change. Manifestations become reified into objects, because we stop looking. We fall partially asleep, often lost in the thoughts that popped into mind—the thoughts we took as “ours.”
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mike, the heavy lifting has been done when it comes to dating rocks, but the rock record isn't perfect, and the fossil record is even less perfect the further you go back in time.
Rocks are uplifted, eroded, and re-deposited again and again. So the further back you go, the less information you have. Right now, we see these very processes taking place at practically every place above sea level.
Something like the Mesozoic, during the age of dinosaurs, is very well represented in sedimentary sequences from all over the world. Cambrian and earlier rocks are still very well represented, and when rocks of a certain age are present, a number of details can be teased from them. Pre-Cambrian sedimentary rocks get harder and harder to find as you go back in time, but if you are willing to travel, there are outcrops here and there around the world.
The surface rocks in Oklahoma predate the dinosaurs by a hundred million years or more, except for some Cretaceous rocks down south and southeast along the Red River, or in the far western Panhandle.
We still have fossil animals, though. Reptiles that lived before the dinosaurs.
Why are dinosaurs even interesting? Well, they were the dominate fauna of the planet for the entire Mesozoic. Mammals also existed with them, but they were few in number, and small in size. Throughout the history of extinctions, large animals always seem the first to go. Just look at the Pleistocene megafauna. Take a trip over to the La Brea tar pits for an excellent collection of their skeletons. There aren't that many mammoths in the collection, but their are hundreds of Dire Wolves and Sabre-Tooth cats. Apparently, when a big meal got stuck in the tar, predators came in droves to feed off of them, and died as well.
What killed them off for good is an open question, but it seems likely that the arrival of man spelled their doom. Lots of bones have tool marks on them. When man developed the projectile point, it gave them an advantage. The extinction coincides with the arrival of man in the Americas. Is that an air-tight case? Nope.
We know, just from the number of extant species that we see today, and the statistics of preservation, that we are probably only aware of 1% of extinct species in the fossil record. That is on a species level. It is much more complete on a genus level, and the more general you characterize a species, the more complete the fossil record becomes. Clades are pretty well understood, as is the Family and Genus level.
I work with plants these days, instead of oil, and the most complete record of plants is found in spores and pollen. Land plants didn't arrive until the Ordovician, when mosses and liverworts came onto the scene. Vascular plants arose in the Silurian. Plants didn't really take off until the Devonian, far later than the Cambrian Explosion, when complicated marine animals first appeared.
If you want to come visit, I'm sure that I could arrange a visit to the collection. I have to come in, get my key card from security, and even the elevator will only open on my floor, and the door to the collection has another keypad. Banks don't have that much security.
I was talking to our boss yesterday, and he had found a new Cretaceous species of Pollen. Plants don't preserve well, but spores and pollen provide an excellent record. Most ancient plants still survive to this day, so comparative anatomy of spores and pollen can be narrowed down to Genus in most circumstances.
I've also found a number of volcanic ash deposits in the Pennsylvanian and Permian outcrops in Oklahoma, in thick sedimentary sequences that are difficult to precisely date, down to a tiny error factor. I'm going to visit the ash deposits and see if they are indeed a part of the stratigraphy, or if they are much younger Tertiary deposits laid on top of the older rocks as lake deposits. If they are indeed old, I'll be able to put an exact number on the date of some of the most important sedimentary sections in the mid-continent. Relative dates have long been known, and the ages are given based on many other factors, but sedimentary rocks lack that atomic clock so common in igneous rocks.
I queried the database and found 3 ash beds. A little searching, and I found another 5. I'll have to visit these beds, and map them on the surface, but if they are indeed Permian or Carboniferous, I'll be able to date the rocks around them very accurately.
So there is a paper right there.
We don't see thin ash beds in oil wells. They are so loose, like broken chalk, that the drill bit grinds them to tiny particles, and you can't see them in samples. Their surface occurrence was news to me, and I've worked this area for decades.
That is how it works. If the ash beds are not recent lake deposits, and are a layer in the Paleozoic, I'll be able to date the ash beds with radiometric techniques. I doubt that I will find zircons in ash, so it won't be super precise, but it will have an error factor of + or - 5 million years or so. That seems like a lot until you consider that these rocks are 350 million years old.
That is the way that it works. Geology is like a detective story. At the beginning, it was crude, but by the mid-1800's, people were doing fairly good science, and fairly good stratigraphy. Since then, an army of scientists have scoured these areas, because they also harbor huge oil and gas reserves.
Those areas have seen constant attention for 75 years. The basics have been figured out. What is lacking is formation-scale maps, which are generally intellectual property. That hurts sedimentary geology. Incredible amounts of science and study will never get published, because it is proprietary.
That part of it is a drag. There are a lot of papers, but the cutting edge stuff is top secret. Companies spend a lot of money on petrophysics and sedimentary environment analysis.
I can't think of another science, off hand, like Petroleum Geology. The best work is done in the private sector, and it never gets published. The reproduction of effort is a pain. There are regular seminars where some of the info leaks out, but not the important stuff. The information that gives a company an edge over another one.
Hopefully I will find a paper to do regarding the volcanic ash deposits.
Go-B. I might be able to send you an Excel spreadsheet with most of the collection catalogued, if you don't believe that this stuff has been examined properly. I'm dating each sample right now.
I'm working with microfossils. The big plant fossils aren't as common, or useful, in most cases.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Love your posts, Base. Grounded, thoughtful, and full of the wonder that is the scientific quest.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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^^ Step two...
Absent from the Body
“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8)
This wonderful phrase of hope—“absent from the body, present with the Lord”—was the most appropriate inscription we could think of to place on the gravestone of our youngest son when he died many years ago. He was a solid Christian young man with a good Christian testimony, so we are indeed “confident” that he has been “present with the Lord” ever since sudden cancer temporarily conquered his body, leaving a beautiful wife and three young children behind.
Therefore, though we all miss him deeply, we “sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Sadly, however, there are many others who are “without Christ, . . . having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Although Christ has paid the full redemption price on the cross to have their sins forgiven and to give them eternal life, they spurn His love and so Jesus has to say, “And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40).
The times of judgment are coming, when they learn that “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). Right now, however, all who know Christ as their Lord and Savior can know, with Paul, that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
Furthermore, when Christ returns, “them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14). And then He will change our old body, whether in the grave or still living, “that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” and “we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (Philippians 3:21; 1 John 3:2). HMM
http://www.icr.org/article/9549/
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Mark, your thoughtful posts are illuminating. Thanks.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Hah hah. I don't seem to have ADHD today. It is difficult to convey the amount of study that has been done on rocks. An amazing amount. A simple little rock that you find in your driveway can tell an incredible story.
Why? Economics. Ore bodies are found in Igneous and Metamorphic rocks (occasionally in sedimentary rocks).
Oil is found in sedimentary rocks. Quite often, an oil or gas well is targeting a single horizon, or formation. You drill through hundreds of millions of years of rocks to get at that one porous sandstone or limestone that contains hydrocarbons (If your hypothesis turns out to be correct).
I browsed Go-B's Creationist website. It makes me want to gag. They very selectively pick on the rock record, and never tell the whole story. It is a child's viewpoint, but they try to make it sound scientific. There are out and out lies on that website.
EVERYTHING that we look at points at an old Earth and an old Universe. The only way around the tens of thousands of papers written by thousands of scientists over the last 50 years or so is to say that all of these clues as to age were placed there by the devil (or God) to confuse us.
As we see with the post above, Christians use circular reasoning.
-The Earth is young, and was created by God, along with the rest of the Universe in 6 days.
-We know that this is true because the Bible tells us so, many times, not just in the book of Genesis. Just look at the quotes from the Bible posted above.
THAT is a circular argument.
Do you disagree with mathematics? Do you think that 5 plus 5 equals 12?
Physics is based on mathematics. We know the rate of decay of each Uranium isotope, as well as their daughter elements. There are two isotope chains that can be used in Uranium-Lead dating:
The U-238 series: U-238 decays to PB-206, with a half-life of 4.47 billion years.
The U-235 series: U-235 to PB-207, with a half-life of 710 million years.
Zircons are the best. Zircons happily incorporate Uranium in their crystal structure as they are formed in igneous rocks, but they reject lead. Zircons are like quartz: they are very tough. They can withstand weathering processes as well as tectonic and even some metamorphic processes. Like quartz, they don't chemically alter very well. They are tough.
If your rock is fortunate enough to contain zircons, you can very accurately date that rock. The half life is so long that they are better for older rocks. Carbon dating is mainly used by archaeologists, because its half life is only 5700 years. It is also subject to contamination, whereas a zircon is like a bulletproof safe. Nothing attacks Zircons except concentrated HF acid. They may get tossed around, but they survive.
Here are two cool websites. The first is from the Kansas Geological Survey, who keeps an incredible site. Tucked in there is the stratigraphic column of all of Kansas. I can correlate these rocks as they go deep into the subsurface in the western part of the state. Kansas stratigraphy is very "layer cake" like. Correlations are easy with well logs.:
http://www.kgs.ku.edu/General/Strat/Chart/index.html
Another is the Paleomap project, which shows the arrangement of continents and oceans throughout time. As we know from above, certain common minerals retain their orientation to magnetic north when lithified. Carefully oriented cores can then be used to measure that paleomag orientation, and voila...you can tell latitude when the rock was deposited.
It has been done with rocks all around the world, so now it is possible to make a sort of movie of wandering continents. This is cool:
http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Here is a very interesting debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis.
Note that Mr. Ham draws a distinct line between experimental science and observational science. In his mind, if we aren't or weren't there, then the science is without value.
This is a LONG video, but I enjoyed it. Be very careful when you listen to Mr. Ham. He uses some very slippery logic. He also loves to point out Christians who are also scientists. He doesn't point out any Christian Geologists or Astronomers or Cosmologists, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvO3zJaNBjs
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Wow, kudos from Mr. Gill.
I'm honored.
You, sir, are a wonderful example for the rest of us of mens sana in corpore sano.
Thank you so much for all the inspiration for body, mind, and spirit over the years.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 10, 2016 - 10:40am PT
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Working out with the weight of God's Word builds us up with spiritual growth...
“I commune with mine own heart: and my spirit made diligent search.” (Psalm 77:6)
Christopher Columbus is recognized in this country for his bold search across the Atlantic, resulting in the major exploration and colonization of North America. As with many great men, variations abound of his character, but he is widely recognized as a Bible-quoting religious man.
Motivation seems to be the key behind the success of history’s “great” men. Some inner drive captivated the heart of those explorers, inventors, statesmen, generals, and leaders. And so it is with the prophets, priests, and kings of the Kingdom—they were driven by a “burning fire” in their “bones” (Jeremiah 20:9).
Solomon, granted wisdom by God, nonetheless gave his “heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 1:13). Excellence does not just happen!
Those Berean Christians who were cited as being more “noble” than the Thessalonians were recognized because they “received the word with all readiness of mind, and [emphasis added] searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). They listened (passive), but they also searched (active).
Spiritual maturity does not come by mere chronological survival! “Strong meat,” the Scripture notes, “belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14).
Careful attention to the instructions in the Word and careful observance to follow those instructions are the only formula for God’s blessing of prosperity and “good success” (Joshua 1:8). HMM III
http://www.icr.org/article/9550/
...time to hit the Holy gym!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Oct 10, 2016 - 12:14pm PT
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"To doubt the (inherent) perfection of the creature is to doubt the perfection of the Creator."
~ St. Thomas Aquinas
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 10, 2016 - 12:15pm PT
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Go-B, I'm quite happy to see that a short geology lesson didn't in any way alter your faith. I'm not in business for that. I'd take no pleasure in doing that to somebody.
However, in the future, think twice before posting something from a Creationist website. That is just too juicy for me to pass up.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 10, 2016 - 01:24pm PT
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Base, God's got His eye on you brother! ; )
Edit; John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 10, 2016 - 03:02pm PT
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Good educational posts, Base.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Oct 10, 2016 - 03:31pm PT
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Go-B, If you had to distill the New Testament down to the 4 most important passages for you what would they be?
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 10, 2016 - 03:58pm PT
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John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
1 Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
1 Corinthians 1313 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Hebrews 1:1 God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, 2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. 3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 John 3:23 This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.
...Sorry I can't count!
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