Creator
Through whom also He made the worlds 1:2
Why believe in creation? Does it matter anyway?
I believe that it is vital for Christians to believe in Creation. Why? What does it matter if we believe that man evolved over millions of years rather than being created suddenly? Many Christians believe that God started off the process of evolution and kept it on track in some way after this. This is called Theistic evolution. Isn’t this enough? No! Theistic evolution poses real problems if we want to be true to the Scriptures - even if we accept some stories as only being allegories. What difference does it make whether one believes the world was created or evolved? Let me read you one person’s viewpoint:
“Christianity is - must be! - totally committed to special creation as described in Genesis, and Christianity must fight with its full might against the theory of evolution. And here is why.
In Romans we read that ‘sin entered the world through one man, and through sin - death, and thus death has spread through the whole human race because everyone has sinned.’ (5:12)
...the whole justification of Jesus’ life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam’s fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None.
Even a high school student knows enough about evolution to know that nowhere in the evolutionary description of our origins does there appear an Adam or an Eve or an Eden or a forbidden fruit. Evolution means a development from one form to the next to meet the ever-changing challenges from an ever-changing nature. There is no fall from a previous state of sublime perfection.
Without Adam or original sin, Jesus Christ is reduced to a man with a mission on the wrong planet!”
Who said that? A fervent creationist? No, it was an outspoken evolutionist writing in the American Atheist magazine! Perhaps he understands the issues more clearly than many Christians. It is very important that we are clear. Was Christ merely a man with a mission on the wrong planet? Not at all, He was truly God incarnate on a mission of love to the right planet, as we have already seen in our earlier studies in this chapter.
The atheistic formula for evolution is - matter + evolutionary factors (chance and necessity + mutation + selection + isolation + death) + very long time periods. In the theistic evolutionary view, God is added - matter + evolutionary factors+ very long time periods + God.
In the theistic evolutionary system, God is not the omnipotent Lord of all things, whose Word has to be taken seriously by all men, but He is integrated into evolutionary philosophy. Theistic evolution holds that:
· God used evolution as a means of creating.
· The Bible contains no usable or relevant ideas to guide present-day origins science.
· Evolutionistic pronouncements have priority over biblical statements. The Bible must be reinterpreted when and wherever it contradicts the present scientific consensus.
The Nature of God
The Bible reveals God to us as our Father in Heaven, who is absolutely perfect (Matthew 5:48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect), holy (Isaiah 6:3 “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”), and omnipotent (Jeremiah 32:17 “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for You.”). The Apostle John tells us that God is love, light, and life (1 John 4:16; 1:5; 1:1-2). When this God creates something, His work is described as very good (Genesis 1:31) and “perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4). Theistic evolution represents God as shaping the world and all that is in it by suffering and death and, with millions of years of suffering and death before there was even any man or woman to sin. This is like suggesting that Michael Angelo shaped his great sculptures with cannon balls instead of fine tools!
God is relegated to a God of the Gaps
The Bible reveals God as the Prime Cause of all things. For us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. (1 Corinthians 8:6).
However, in theistic evolution the only place for God is that which evolution cannot “explain” or the designer working quietly, and very slowly, behind the scenes. In this way He is reduced to being a god of the gaps.
Undermines trustworthiness of God’s Word
We believe that the Bible is the one and only source of truth given and inspired by God. (2 Tim 3:16) The Old Testament prepares us for, and leads us into the New Testament (John 5:39 39 You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.) The biblical creation account should not be regarded as a myth, a parable, or an Allegory, but as a historical report, because, to give you a few examples:
· Biological, astronomical and other details are given as facts not allegorically or poetically and that is how they were understood for thousands of years. Did God deliberately mislead people?
· In the Ten Commandments God bases our week of six working days and one day of rest on the time-span as that described in the creation account (Exodus 20:8-11).
· In the New Testament Jesus referred to the creation story as if it were factual (e.g. Matthew 19:4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’).
· Nowhere in the Bible is there any indication that the creation account should be understood in any other way than as a factual report.
Theistic evolution undermines this approach to the Bible, as vouched for by Jesus, the prophets and the Apostles. Events are reduced to mythical imagery. You can no longer just take its straightforward meaning. It is unreliable and needs to be subject to a higher authority - science!
For thousands of years people have taken the story of creation in Genesis at its face value. For all of the fancy theological arguments put forward today about it just being an allegory, the inevitable conclusion is that God deliberately mislead people about the beginning of our world. If the Bible was wrong in the very first chapter of Genesis, then its trustworthiness is called into question.
What is the cause/significance of death?
Theistic evolution does not acknowledge Adam as the first man, nor that he was created directly from the dust of the ground by God (Genesis 2:17). Most theistic evolutionists regard the creation account as being merely a mythical tale, albeit with some spiritual significance.
If we evolved then most of the fossils were deposited before human life began. This means that there was death on the earth before human life, but why? Scripture teaches that death is the result of human sin and if there were no humans then there could be no human sin to cause the death of the animals which formed the fossils. Much of the teaching of scripture regarding sin and salvation must therefore be false. Romans 5:12 says: Sin entered the world through one man, and in this way death came to all men. So you see you cannot simply remove the creation account and hold onto the remainder of Scripture. It stands or falls as a whole for the sinner, Adam, and the Saviour, Jesus, are inextricably linked together. Any view that mythologizes Adam inevitably undermines Jesus work of redemption.
Man is just an animal
Numerous scientists have noted that one result of evolutionary thinking is acceptance that humans are purposeless parts of creation, rather than lords over it. Nothing more than an accident of history, “cosmically inconsequential bundles of stardust, adrift in an infinite and purposeless universe”. “Our lives are brief and inconsequential in the cosmic scheme of things” and therefore life has no ultimate purpose because there is no heaven, hell, or afterlife. “Everything we have learned in science since the time of Galileo suggests that the [universe is] … oblivious to our fates [and] that the grave is our destiny.” (Raymo) Palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson, taught that, “Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind”.
Richard Dawkins believes that people who believe life was created for a purpose are not only are mistaken, but ignorant: “Only the scientifically illiterate believe we exist for a higher purpose. The scientifically literate know there is no reason why we exist, we just do as an accident of history.” [I’d rather be called ignorant by men than a fool by God!]
In contrast the Bible teaches us that:
· Man is God’s purpose in creation (Genesis 1:27-28).
· Man is the object of God’s plan of redemption (Is 53:5) and the mission of His Son (1 Jn 4:9).
· Heaven is our destination (1 Peter 1:4).
“Created in God’s image” means that man was different from all the other things and creatures that had been created. Man was to have a soul and a capacity for fellowship with God. Man was God’s crowning, culminating work! Man, being made in God’s image is worthy of respect and his life is of great value and not to be taken lightly or murdered or mistreated. It was God’s intention that man would become “conformed to the likeness of Christ” (Ro. 8:29), “would be righteous and holy” (Ephesians 4:24), “would someday be like Him (Jesus)” (1 John 3:2), and would be ruler over areas delegated to him by his Creator-God. If evolution is true, however, we are just animals. We have no eternal souls, no higher purpose. As Solomon concluded, when he excluded God, a man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry (Ec 8:15) for tomorrow we die!
What does that mean for society and our worldview?
This world of ours is one of amazing detail and design. I cannot believe that it is the product of blind chance. If it were so then we came from nothing and to nothing we will return. There is no life beyond death and no God to whom we must answer for the way we have lived the lives He has given us. It also follows that there is no absolute standard of right or wrong, life is not sacred because we are just animals, and we should be governed by expediency ¾ this is the new morality. Is it any surprise that such thinking has coincided with a tremendous growth in abortion and euthanasia other things that result from a devaluing of human life?
Well that shows, I hope, that creation is central to Christianity, but
Is the Bible story of creation credible?
Why has the theory of evolution gained such ground over the last hundred years or so? Is it because of the overwhelming evidence? On the contrary, many of the assumptions on which Charles Darwin founded his theory still remain unproven assumptions. There is no satisfactory mechanism for evolution. Why then do most scientists still believe the theory to be essentially correct and why do people become so aggressive with those who teach creation?
If there is no creator then we must be the products of blind chance, unlikely as that may appear. The very fact of our existence proves it must be so. Eliminate the impossible and whatever is left, however improbable, is the truth. I am convinced that evolution is held on to because people do not want to believe in God. If evolution is false then there must be a creator, man is not the sole arbiter of his destiny and there is a God to whom we are accountable. This fits what Paul wrote in Rom.1:21-23: although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools.
But is it seriously possible for a person of the 21st Century to believe in creation? Yes I am a physicist by training and someone trained to question what he is told by profession, yet I believe that God created this world, and all that it contains, exactly as disclosed in the Bible.
If evolution is true and things started simple and slowly developed into more complicated forms why is it that many relatively complicated organisms are found in the ‘oldest’ rocks (Cambrian). These fossils represent nearly every group of organism alive today. Also protozoa are virtually absent from this level, but many are found in the higher levels.
In most cases there is no evidence in the fossil record that transitional forms ever existed. They are an evolutionary axiom of faith! They must have existed or the next step would never have appeared. It is also very difficult to see how such intermediate creatures or organs made creatures better fitted to their environment.
This is not a problem unrecognised by evolutionists and as a result some have proposed a theory of rapid jumps in evolution. There is no known mechanism which would account for such jumps and such theories owe more to irrational faith than science. If there is no God and man evolved then there must be some mechanism for achieving evolution.
Let me briefly develop just one reason for my belief in Creation - that of design. Wherever you look in the animal or plant world you find structures that are perfectly fitted to perform their function. Is this by natural selection where thousands of beneficial mutations slowly accumulate to produce the finished product as evolutionists assert.
Consider the eye. A functional eye requires a retina onto which light falls and where this information is turned into a coded electrical signal; an optic nerve to transmit that signal to the brain and a part of the brain to decode that signal. In addition we need a lens and cornea to focus the light and muscles to direct the eye ... I could go on. Without any one component, each of which is itself very complicated we could not see. The proposed ancestor of the eye is like the eyes of creatures like jellyfish and the lancet. These are a group of light sensitive cells and the gulf between these and our eyes is enormous. Which was added first, a lens to focus the light or a brain to understand this detail? Extra information is of no use if you can’t understand it!
Conclusion
Returning to Hebrews to close, verse 2 tells us that Jesus created the worlds . The question is whether you will make a leap of faith that is not supported by logic or the evidence, or whether you will take the Bible at its word and dedicate yourself to know and serve your creator. I do not have all of the answers, but I know a Man who does. And I would rather trust Jesus, who has proved Himself and His word reliable in countless ways, than to trust the science of men whose minds are blind to the existence of God and whose work is tainted accordingly.
John 1:3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.
