"Creation Or Evolution? Your Decision!” Series

“Creation or Evolution? Your Decision!”

Genesis 1:24-27; v, 31b and 2:4-7

This morning we come to the 2nd question in our series titled “God questions?” Today’s question is centered round the topic of Evolution or Creation —which is correct? You have perhaps noticed in our scripture today that the Bible tells us that on day 6 that God created man and also the animals in the same day. Now the fact that man and animals were created in the dame day has caused people to ask for years what if there is a relationship between man and animals and if so what is the relationship? How did man come into this world? Well you know that there are 2 primary views of the origin of man.

1. There is the view of evolution. Evolution states that man evolved from lower forms of life. And that this happened over time – a long time in fact – millions of years. So if you were to speak to someone who believes in the evolution of man and asked then to describe how this took place they would say something like this …. We come from green scum. We were a paramecium who then became a tadpole who then became a bird who then became a monkey who then became an ape who then became the person you are today. Now that description reminds me of a poem that says:

Once I was a tadpole beginning to begin,

Then I was a frog with my tail tucked in,

Then I was a monkey in a banyon tree

And now I’m a professor with a Ph.D.

So if evolution is true then man is really nothing more than an animal and although it seems that way at times because of our behavior I don’t believe that is what God intended.

2. Then there is the view of creation. While evolution states that we came from much lower life, the view of creation says that man actually came from a much higher from. Sin entered the world and man fell and at time we seem to live like animals.Now I think that it’s obvious to all of us that we cannot reconcile these two views. Evolution and creation cannot both be correct.

3. Then there is a 3rd view that attempts to do exactly that. To combine the view of creation and the view of evolution. It is called theistic evolution. And it says that God created the universe but He did it through the process of evolution. But that is much like riding two horses going in 2 opposite directions. It doesn’t work. You simply cannot reconcile the two. Either man evolved from lower forms of life OR man was created by God’s hands as the scripture teaches. We can only ride one of these horses. Evolution or creation. So let’s look at both.

1. The theory of evolution. First of all we need to understand that when we refer to evolution we are not saying that a species cannot change. Of course it can and it does. We are not saying that cannot happen. But evolution say something different ….. it says that one species can become another species. We know for instance that a tadpole becomes a frog but I cannot agree that a frog becomes a bird.

Now let me state the obvious here. I love Science but I am not a scientist. We performed surgery in high school biology on frogs and my buddies and I were amateur astronomers with small telescopes hoping to discover flying saucers. We even built one and went down the local newspaper and told them about it and ended up on the front-page news. But no, I am not a scientist … I am a preacher with a very curious mind who tries to understand what science has to say. And I love it. Now perhaps you have visited a museum. If so, you may have seen displayed what they call prehistoric man. With the limits of time I will be brief here. One id referred to as Nebraska man. Here is a picture from a museum. You are familiar with the famous Scopes trial where John Scopes was on trial for teaching evolution in the state of Tennessee about 100 years ago. In that trial the attorney Clarence Darrow tried to prove evolution b using the Nebraska Ape man. He proposed that this discovery was over one million years old and that this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that evolution was true. So everyone started thinking that the “facts” of science had proved that the Bible was wrong and evolution/science was right.

Now what do we know now about this so-called Nebraska man? Are you ready? In the state of Nebraska in 1922 Harold Cook found a fossil. He sent it to a scientist who quickly concluded that the tooth had belonged to an anthropoid ape. They passed the tooth along to two other scientists who quickly agreed and announced that we could now see the missing link between man and ape. Let me quickly say that a credible link has never been established.