creation

Evaluating the case for evolution – Part 1 (Hebrews 11:3)

POST OVERVIEW. The first in a series of posts evaluating the case for evolution from the perspective of a biblical creationist.

EXPLORING THE EVIDENCE, ASKING THE QUESTIONS

In these posts, I will be attempting to objectively explore the fundamental ideas of evolution and then to examine the validity and credibility of these ideas. My purpose for this exercise is to set up the situation where a person like me who holds to a biblical view of creation can examine the case for evolution and see if the evidence for evolution is persuasive. In this exploration, I will also be asking questions of the evolutionist to prompt dialog.

I will begin presenting a small piece of evidence that supports biblical creation. In Hebrews 11:3, the Bible speaks directly to the means by which God created the universe.

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.

Here in this verse the Bible states that God created what is seen out of that which is unseen. This means that God created our universe out of nothing, ex nihilo. God used just the power and authority of His word to bring the universe into being.

The teaching of this verse separates those who, by faith, believe the Bible to be the word of God from those who, lacking faith, do not. This verse drives us back to the very start of the Scriptures, to the first words of Genesis when creation is being described and requires us to make a decision. Do we believe that God created the worlds out of that which did not exist or do we think that some form of evolution was responsible for all we see in the creation? The answer to this question reveals whether you have saving faith or you lack it.

Of course, the evolutionist readily admits he does not have faith in God and does not believe the Bible, but we will see that this verse presents a problem for him, nevertheless.

THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINAL MATERIAL

While the proponent of evolution can reject the biblical explanation about God’s creation, he cannot avoid the problem of original material. Why do I say that? I say that because of the very nature of and definition of evolution. Evolution always begins with what already exists and modifies it. Evolution always starts with an existing species and then somehow conceives of an “improvement” in that species to make it more fit to survive. The theory of evolution describes a process whereby existing species improve. Thus evolution requires existing material. For evolution to operate, there must be something already existing that can be evolved. This means that the proponents of evolution must address the issue of origin. What is the source of the original material that was originally subject to “improvement”?

Even if it could be shown that the existence of the breathtaking variety of animals and birds and fish and plants and rocks and mountains and trees on our planet and the spectacular beauty of the uncountable stars in the heavens is the result of an evolutionary process (see below), those who promote evolution must still answer the question of original material. And simply saying, “The big bang,” does not answer the question, but merely throws it into the realm of myth.

THE NATURE OF EVOLUTION’S ABILITIES

As we consider “evolution” more deeply, we see that the nature of evolution itself is mysterious. For example, to make the theory of evolution function, proponents of the theory give to evolution a personality and a will that results in a purpose. It seems that evolution’s one purpose in life is to improve flawed species and make them better able to survive. According to the experts, evolution has been doing this for hundreds of millions or billions of years. To equip evolution for its vital role in our universe, it has also been given the remarkable ability to detect design flaws in any creature in any corner of the earth. And evolution never sleeps. Wherever there is a “design flaw” in any living creature, plant or animal, anywhere on the seven continents, there evolution will be found, working tirelessly over millions of years if necessary to ultimately “create” an improved species. And evolution does all this without any intelligent input from anything outside of itself. What I mean is that evolution appears to do all its remarkable work perpetually and as if by instinct. Evolution just does what it does automatically, spontaneously, perpetually, and independently. This seems like a stretch to me.

THE NATURE OF EVOLUTION’S IMPROVEMENTS

Equally curious to me are the “improvements” that evolution makes. According to proponents, evolution is responsible for all the spectacular variety of plant and animal life we see displayed in every corner of the globe. Birds, fish, mammals, insects of all types, trees, plants, grasses, bacteria. Everywhere we see life in all its infinite diversity, there we know that evolution has been at work.

An example of this concept at work requires that at some point in time and for some unknown reason, evolution “decided” that some species of fish was flawed or needed to be improved so that it could become a bird. And so evolution began the process of making incremental changes (“improvements”) over millions of years such that a male and a female of this species of fish would eventually shed their scales and the gills needed for breathing in water, and would abandon the sources of food that they ate as fish, and would emerge from the ocean waves with hollow bones and feather-covered wings with the ability to fly and to make nests and to lay eggs and to breathe air and to eat an entirely new diet of food that just happened to be available right at the place where they emerged from the water.

This seems like a stretch to me. There does not seems to be any evidence to support this sort of evolution ever taking place, nor does this process seem to be possible. But the other question would be, “Why would this ever happen?” In our example, the fish species was functioning and surviving perfectly well before they “evolved.” They had food to survive, they reproduced, they did all they needed to do to live out their days. Why would the fish need to be changed into birds? How would their becoming birds be an improvement? More than that, how would the seismic changes in these fish be sustained over the thousands of generations needed to change a fish to a bird, since at each change, there would need to be a male and a female of the intermediate fish-bird species to keep it going? Again, it seems to be a stretch.

SUMMARY. So far, we have presented three ideas that threaten the credibility of evolution: the origin of matter, evolution’s abilities, and evolution’s improvements. I will continue this examination of evolution in the next post by asking some questions of the evolutionist.

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 3/20/2023                   #633

Romans 1:18-25: The General Revelation Cannot Save

POST OVERVIEW. An article considering how the creation clearly reveals the existence of a powerful creating God but does not present the gospel so that man can be saved.

After declaring that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16), Paul launches into the prosecution of all mankind because of their sin and unrighteousness. Romans 1:18 declares that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and then Paul talks about “general revelation,” which is the term for what creation reveals to us about God.

“Because that which may be known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. 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 1:19-20

But while the creation “declares the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1-6), and while what has been made by the creative hand of God gives anyone but a fool (Psalm 14:1) overwhelming evidence of a supreme Creator (Romans 1:19-20), the creation and general revelation will never bring a sinner to repentance and faith, and this for many reasons.

First, for the fallen and unredeemed man, the creation does not reveal the one true God, but merely evidences some power much greater than the creature. That this is true is displayed by pantheism and polytheism and even through the foolishness of evolution, in which modern man denies what his senses and his intellect make unambiguously clear to him. To move a sinner to salvation, the sinner must be pointed to the one true God, indeed, must be pointed to the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through the gospel. The sinner must encounter the God who saves sinners.

Second, the creation does not reveal the fallenness and the wickedness of every human heart and does not reveal that man is by nature sinful. Through the creation alone any man and every man is free to behave as he pleases, because the creation is not moral. It displays God’s power, but it does not proclaim His holiness. Without the Law there is no concept of sin (Romans 3:20; etc.), and so there is no awareness of how wicked we are. The Law was given to display God’s holiness and our unholiness.

Third, the creation does not make clear that God’s holy wrath is directed against my sin and that my sin deserves to be judged. Only the gospel declares to the sinner that their sin deserves the judgment of death and presents to the sinner the certainty of hell for those who will not respond to the gospel message.

Fourth, there is nothing in the natural creation that would point to the Lord Jesus Christ and would declare Him to be the Savior of sinners. The Lord is not presented through what has been made, but rather through those who have been chosen to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8, etc.). Paul declares in Romans that the Lord Jesus must be presented or no one can ever believe (Romans 10:14-15). The gospel is where the Lord Jesus is proclaimed.

Fifth, the creation does not tell the sinner what to do in order to be saved. It must be acknowledged that the plan of salvation wrought through the Incarnation and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is completely unlikely and would never be conceived by the mind of man. But even if there was history that told of Jesus, nowhere would man know of the significance of that life and what to do to respond to Jesus. Only the gospel tells us that we must respond by believing on Christ as Lord and Savior to be saved.

Sixth, the creation brings no conviction of sin, because the creation is not empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that brings conviction of sin (John 16:8ff) and without His power, the man does not experience conviction. By contrast, the Holy Spirit is empowered to bring about conviction of sin.

Seventh and finally, the creation gives the sinner no power to repent and believe. The creation is powerless to move the sinner to repentance and faith. Without the Holy Spirit’s moving through the gospel the sinner is left dead in transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1-7). But the gospel brings with it the power to stir the dead heart of the sinner and to remove the heart of stone and to create a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36).

Thus we must conclude that there is no way that “the native in Africa” who has never heard the gospel can come to faith in Christ and be saved, for there is nothing in their experience that can bring them to saving faith in Jesus Christ. All of this information and all of these steps listed are necessary for salvation, but it is “the gospel that is the power of God to salvation” (Romans 1:16). Without the gospel being preached and understood and without the response of faith no one is saved. Thus the person holding a Bible in a stadium in Houston who has never been convicted of their personal sin and who therefore has never come to repentance and faith is no better off than “the native in Africa” who has never been exposed to one word of the gospel. Both are equally lost.

In our next post, we will consider the implications of these ideas about the creation for our evangelism and for our apologetics.

Soli Deo gloria            rmb                 3/6/2023                     #630

Since the creation of the world (Romans 1:20)

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

The Pot and the Potter (Isaiah 45:9)

            The picture in the Scripture is intentionally a little bit absurd, that is, the picture of a clay pot arguing with the potter who created the pot. Yes, the picture is intentionally absurd because no pot would ever argue with the potter who made it. The pot is the created and the potter is the creator, and it is absurd to think that such a pot, which was brought into existence from a formless lump by the predetermined plan of the potter, would argue with the one who conceived of the pot and then fashioned the pot into something useful. This picture is presented in the Bible to show the absurdity of people rebelling against and disobeying the Lord, their Creator.

            In Isaiah 45:6, the prophet tells us ab out just such an argument:

“Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker – An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’?”

            In addition to the futility of this argument, there will also be woe (calamity, disaster) to the one who quarrels with his Maker. How absurd it is then – a clay pot saying to the potter, “What are you doing?” and bringing upon itself unnecessary woe and disaster!

            But as absurd as it is for a clay pot to make demands upon and to defy the potter, it is much more outrageous for man the creature to disobey and despise the Lord, his Creator, and bring upon himself woe and disaster! Yet this is what is done by many people in our world as they willfully and intentionally satisfy the desires of their own flesh and do what their conscience tells them they should not do (Romans 2:14-16).

There are many examples of ways that we rebel against the Lord, somehow believing that we have the right to rant against and to defy our gracious God and that He will bear with our rebellion forever without consequence.

            But this is not the case. The Bible is clear from Genesis to Revelation that there is coming a day of judgment “when God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus (Romans 2:16).” Yes, the LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness (Psalm 103:8). Yes, the Lord desires for all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy2:4). Yes, the LORD takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 18:23, 32), but the Lord also declares that the only way for you to escape the terrifying day of judgment is to repent of your sins and to place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Therefore, I will judge you, each according to his conduct,” declares the Lord GOD. “Repent and turn away from all your transgressions. Cast away from you all your transgressions which you have committed! Why will you die? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies,” declares the LORD. “Therefore, repent and live! (Ezekiel 18:30-32)”

            The living God sees all our rebellion, and the consequences for created clay pots who persist in rebelling against the Potter will be disastrous, indeed. My advice is for you to bow the knee to Jesus today, and enjoy the blessings of the Lord, your Creator.

SDG                 rmb                 7/15/2020