Minister’s Message

CREATION NOT EVOLUTION, PART 1

Westminster Confession of Faith 4.1

It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good.

     How did everything you see around you get here? Did it evolve from lower forms of life, as the evolutionists teach, or did it come into existence by the creative word of Almighty God, as the Bible teaches?

     Please notice that I have placed creation and evolution in opposition with one another. I have done so because they are contrary faiths, both claiming to hold the exclusive truth on this subject. If this is so, only one can be true.

     Some mistakenly try to harmonize these two contrary positions by inventing a third called “Theistic Evolution.” People who hold to this position attempt to harmonize the Biblical account in Genesis 1 with the current beliefs in evolution. They state that God created by means of evolution. But such is not the case, as we shall see.

     In reality those who try to harmonize the opposing faiths of creation and evolution can do so only by denying important teachings in one or the other doctrines. If they press the account in Genesis 1 into the mold of evolutionary thinking they either deny the order of the Six Day Creation according to the Bible, or they deny the order of evolutionary development. You see, you cannot have it both ways. Either creation is true or evolution is true, but they cannot both be true at the same time, nor can they be fitted together into a consistent theory.

     Let’s set the record straight: the Bible is true and the theory of evolution is false.

     The theory of evolution teaches that the universe and the earth are billions of years old, and that mankind evolved from the lower forms of life. As one book title once put it: From the Goo Through the Zoo to You. Pick up any National Geographic or read any of the Time-Life series of books on the subject and you will have the theory of evolution presented to you in this way. In fact, evolution will be presented not as theory but as established fact.

     The Bible, on the other hand, teaches that the earth and universe are relatively young, thousands instead of millions or billions of years old; that it was all created by fiat (that is, the spoken command of God which brought all into existence where there had been absolutely nothing before); that it was created in the space of six, literal, twenty-four hour days; and that mankind was created by a special act of God to be the image of God.

     Do the facts support one of these beliefs over the other? Yes, they do. They support the biblical account over the theory of evolution.

     As a matter of fact, even scientists who publicly believe in evolution, are privately backing away from evolutionary doctrines. In a program in the PBS series “Ring of Truth” titled “Doubts” the host, Philip Morrison, stated: “The abundance of hydrogen and helium in the universe demonstrates that matter is young and relatively pure, and every theory of the origin of the universe will have to come to grips with that.” He was saying, “Here is an anomaly, a quirk, which our theory of evolution cannot solve.” But he was unable to present a suitable answer to this problem because he does not believe in the account of creation taught in the Bible.

     Those of you old enough to remember the landing of Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969 will also remember that there was some discussion beforehand about whether or not to attempt a lunar landing at all. The reason was based solely on the theory of the age of the universe according to evolutionary thinking. The argument went something like this: If the universe is billions of years old, and the moon has been around much of that time, and space dust has been settling on it all that time, then the dust cover on the surface of the moon might be many yards deep. The lunar landing module could sink out of sight in that build-up of dust!

     But the facts proved the theory wrong. The moon’s dust layer was only a few inches thick, agreeing with the model of a recent creation presented in the Bible, but disagreeing with the evolutionary model of an ancient, evolving universe.

     These are just two small examples of the holes in the theory of evolution, and why its adherents are struggling to understand what to believe as their theory collapses around them.

     We will see in the next articles of this series what the Bible actually teaches about creation, and why you and I should believe such teaching instead of the theory of evolution.