INTRO: This is the first of a series of posts aimed at addressing the religion of evolution, with the hope that Christians will be able to begin to dialog with evolutionists about the gospel.

The Bible begins in the beginning. Before the beginning, before there was time or matter, there was only God, but “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As the grand drama opens, God creates the universe ex nihilo by the power of His word. God speaks, and the heavens and the earth come into existence. What was not suddenly becomes what is. And in Genesis 1:1, with the first verse of the Bible we find the first opportunity to believe. The author of Hebrews puts it this way:

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. – Hebrews 11:3

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is consistent and clear – God created the heavens and the earth. And why did God create the heavens and the earth? God created the visible universe to display His power and His glory, so that man would give Him the worship and the praise that He is due.

Therefore, when Paul pens his gospel treatise to the Romans, he begins the body of the work by talking about God’s creation and about how sinful man responds to what God has revealed.

¹⁸ Men suppress the truth in unrighteousness, ¹⁹ because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. – Romans 1:18-20

God has displayed His power and glory and beauty through the creation, and this is evident to mankind because God has endowed man with senses that enable man to experience God’s creation. The invisible Lord of the universe has fashioned the earth and has then made man out of the dust of the ground so that man will see the evidence for God in the dazzling, spectacular beauty and order of the created universe and will be spurred to seek this glorious Creator-God.

GOD’S DISPLAY IN CREATION

And what has God displayed through His creation?

His invisible attributes – God has made visible His invisible attributes. In the creation, we can see that God is a God of order, for everything in the universe operates on a precise schedule. The movements of the moon and the sun, the spinning of the earth, the distance the earth is from the sun, the size of the earth, the moon, and the sun, the perfect balance in the natural world all attest to a Creator of order. Our God is a lover of beauty, for everywhere in this world we see dazzling beauty. Spectacular colors and infinite hues cover the earth. Our aesthetic sense is saturated with the beauty of this earth. God’s sovereignty is displayed as we consider His ability to design then perfectly construct the design He planned. Living creatures in every corner of the globe, both plants and animals, declare the glory of God. These creatures are perfectly suited to the environment in which they live. God planned the earth to be filled with myriad forms of life, life displayed in colors and movements and length of days, in the sea and on the land and in the air, all of which individually and collectively declaring the sovereign majesty of their Creator.

His eternal power – On earth and in the heavens are limitless testimonies to God’s awesome power. The pounding of the waves. The billowing of the clouds. The winds of typhoons, tornadoes, and hurricanes. The explosions of volcanoes. The shifting of earthquakes. Storms and rivers and winds. The forming of the seas and lifting up of the mountains. All these are displays of God’s power here on this small planet. But as we peer through our telescopes into the realms in the heavens, our human minds boggle at the power we see there manifested. Millions of whirling galaxies attest to God’s power. Supernovas and black holes. Nebulae and stars and asteroids. Spaces too vast for our minds to comprehend. God made these to let us see His power.

His divine nature (divinity) – The summing up of all this beauty and power and perfectly executed creation points to the divinity of God. Unlike false gods, who are given their limited powers by fallen and evil men, the true and living God inherently possesses all power and all ability and all authority to sovereignly rule over heaven and earth. When all the aspects of creation are considered together, and it is acknowledged that God created and rules all of this, His divinity, what we might call “the God-ness of God,” blazes forth in glory.

God has graciously made Himself known by giving mankind a creation that declares His existence and His divinity and His glory. These are “clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Romans 1:20). That there is an infinitely powerful God is unmistakably obvious because God has made it clear to us through His creation. The creation has rendered man “without excuse.” The only way that man can continue in his rebellion and unbelief is by intentionally “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness” (1:19). The denial of God can only be done by willfully rebelling against the constant and overwhelming evidence of the creation.

MAN’S REBELLIOUS RESPONSE TO GOD’S GRACE IN CREATION

What is man’s response to this benevolent God’s gracious provision of a magnificent creation, whose beauty gives pleasure to man’s senses and whose bounty gives provision to all of man’s material needs? What God has created to reveal Himself and to display His glory, sinful man steals and gives to a false god. The unrighteous not only ignore God as Creator, but they even deny God’s existence. Instead of giving God praise and honor for His creation, the unrighteous invent the false god of evolution, then grant sovereignty to the false god of evolution and attribute to evolution all the creative powers of the living God. Thus, we can see that, in his rebellion against the righteous Creator-God, modern man has taken the godless work of Charles Darwin and has used it to invent the false god of evolution. Therefore, the Christian needs to understand that evolution is not a theory about how the world came to be but is the god of another pagan religion that intends to usurp God of His glory in creation and ultimately to render God nonexistent. When seen in its proper light as a pagan religion intended to obscure Christ and eliminate God, the Christian is better prepared to respond to the fanatic tactics of evolution’s religious zealots. Because evolution is a religion, its adherents have a religious fanaticism. Competing ideas can be debated but religion is “convert or die.” So the Christian must have the right attitude when encountering an evolutionist.

In this series of posts, I want to offer ammunition against evolution’s propaganda to hopefully generate some real dialog that may lead to Christians having gospel conversations with evolutionists.

SDG                 rmb                 10/29/2021                 #446