“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.
Now what they found by the way when the said they had a definitive link was that they found a tooth. Not a set of teeth, not an entire skull or body – one tooth. And this is fact. They took that tooth and around it they built this so-called Nebraska man. They then constructed this so-called Nebraska man. They constructed a face and body all based on imagination – then they built a family of little one that looked like Nebraska man. All based on one tooth. By the way, later they discovered that this tooth was not a human at all -- that the tooth actually came from an animal which was a specie of HOG. It was all a hoax.
Other discoveries like this and there have been several have all been proven to be false as well. As I said there has never been a credible link discovered to link together ape and man. In fact, not only is the link missing, most of the chain is missing as well. What we are discovering more and more is that the bones of apes are ancestors of modern apes and the bones of men are ancestors of modern men. God said, I’ll make an animal. God said I’ll make a man. God created man. Man didn’t just happen one day from a lower form of life. Science would like to tell you they have all the facts but they don’t and to believe their theory it takes a lot of faith actually. By the way there is actually now a theory that instead of man evolving from monkeys that monkeys actually evolved from man. When I read that I thought, well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. 😊
In the area of evolution though many claim to hold so much evidence, the evidence over time has been disproven and simply does not hold up.
1. Then there is the view of creation. Man is not an animal. There ARE similarities between the body of man and the body of some animals. But resemblance does not prove relationship. In fact, the evidence actually points to the fact that we have a divine designer who is behind all of this. The area where we are NOT similar is of course that man has a soul. Man will live forever. Man is made in God’s image which does not mean we look like Him; it means that we have the ability to communicate with Him. No other animal has that ability. Animals will not live forever.
Look at Genesis 1:26. Notice the phrase “our image.” This is likely the first reference to the trinity in the Bible. The NT says that in the beginning was the word and the word was God. God made man to rule over creation. Because of sin we have lost a lot of the God given authority we had on earth at the beginning. We now allow many things to dominate us. Material things can dominate us. Money can dominate us. Jesus had authority over the fish of the sea. The disciples had been out fishing all night and had caught nothing. Yet Jesus said let down your net for a catch of fish. The Bible then says that the fish were basically running to get into the net – so many fish that the net broke.
I brought this globe in today. Now if you were to ask me where did you get it Pastor? What if I said well I didn’t get it anywhere. I just walked in today and here it was. So you said, well who made it? Well there were just a bunch of pieces of metal that were rolling around in here and they all got together and sure enough I walked in here this morning and there was this beautiful globe. Evolution tells us that chaos formed what we have today. If I told you that you might look at me like I was crazy. It’s just not logical. It’s not mathematically possible.
Take one protein molecule. We know that one protein molecule has about 100 amino acids linked together; all in the right places. The mathematical probability of that happening is about the same as taking a man and blindfolding him, taking him to the Sahara Desert and asking him to find one grain of sand that you marked in advance. That just doesn’t happen. That takes an awful lot of faith to believe. Now I know that creation takes lot of faith to believe as well. Believing in God and the fact that He created all of this takes a lot of faith and that is exactly what we are called to … a walk of faith. But don’t think for a minute that science has all the answers. Listen, every human cell and there are 1 trillion of them by the way in your body … every one of those cells has a 6 ft strand of DNA that as much information stored on it as an entire set of encyclopedias to tell the cells how to build protein. Now for this to be random it would be like taking every letter of the alphabet, multiple letters and placing them in a box and throwing it all into the air and expecting it to come down and form a set of encyclopedias. It’s impossible.
Listen, the Bible is not a book of science. It’s not intended to be. But it is amazingly accurate. Many prophecies have already been fulfilled. Hundreds. More will be as time goes on. In the 1400’s a debate began as to whether the world was round or flat. Actually, it was hardly a debate. Only a few were convinced that the world was round. Everyone else said it was flat. After all, look around and what do you see? It looks flat. But Christopher Columbus said otherwise. He planned to set sail to what is now the very land we live in. People warned him that he would sail just so far and then he would reach the edge and fall over. Because it was flat. Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to authorities because he taught that the earth revolved around the sun. Which it does. The Catholic church said that thought was heresy. The church said that the earth is the center of the universe not the sun. But the church was wrong. This happens to be an area where if we would follow scripture we would have known the answer. Now as I said the Bible is not a science book but in the areas that science has actually proven, the bible does not disagree. In the OT book of Isaiah written about 3000 years ago ….. 2500 years before Columbus showed us that the world is round, Isaiah said, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth.” Isaiah 40:22. There are statements made on both sides that seem reasonable. For me my faith is the answer. All of this simply could not have happened by coincidence.
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This message was preached by David Henderson on April 15, 2018 at Eagle’s Landing Church in Port Richey, Florida. References cited are listed below.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING
1. Wikipedia. Scopes Trial. 20 pages. Well over 100 articles are quoted here.
2. Sermon preached by Dr. Jerry Vines, “God or Gorilla?”
3. Sermon preached by Dr. Jerry Vines, “World in a Week”
4. Defendinginnerancy.com/bible-solutions. See article titled Genesis 2;1-How could the world be created in 6 days?
Books by Lee Strobel that are very helpful. They are usually relatively brief, about 150 pages, well documented and easy to read. Written in the style of a journalist.
• The Case for Christ, (September 1, 1998), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-22605-8
• The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity, (October 1, 2000), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-22015-7
• The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God (2004), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-26386-7
• The Case for Easter: Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection (2004), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-25475-2
• The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger (2005), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-25476-0
• The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ (September 10, 2007), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-24210-X
• The Case for Christianity Answer Book (July 1, 2014), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-33955-3
• The Case for Hope: Looking Ahead with Confidence and Courage (2015), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-33957-X
• The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives (2015), Zondervan, ISBN 0-310-25923-1
