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The Way It Was by Kelly L. Segraves

Before we can ever hope to have an answer to the perplexing problems facing mankind, we must be sure that we have examined all the evidence. We must be positive that all areas of knowledge have been carefully tested in order to be sure of our conclusions.

For years, now , man has assumed his origin was from a lower form of animal life; he has accepted that life came from non-living material, he has adopted as sacred the great age of the earth. But can we be sure? Can we really accept these positions as actual facts? Can you?

Before you answer that question, let me pose one more; have you ever examined the only alternative to evolution? The creation alternative. If not, then you owe it to yourself to study the creation position in detail. At least you should know what it is. After all, how else will you know for sure, the way it was?

The Beginning

In the first chapter of Genesis we read. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here, in the opening verse of the Bible, God deals with the concept of creation, and tells us that in the beginning He created the heavens and the earth. We might wonder exactly when was the beginning? When did creation take place? Genesis 1:31-2:3 states: "And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." The heavens and the earth were finished after the sixth day and on the seventh day God ended the work which He had made and He rested. Quite simply then, the beginning must have taken place six days before the completion. It has occasionally been said that the word "day" could represent a very long period of time. Let us look closely at the Word of God to see if we can understand what a day is.

A Day is a Day

God defined the word "day" for us the first time He used it. Genesis 1:4-5: "And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light form the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." The light period is called day and the dark period called night, much like our normal usage of the word day. It says "the evening and the morning were the first day." The phrase "evening and morning" is the normal Hebrew expression for a complete day. The day begins in the evening, continues through the night period, then into the morning and through the day. One total day, one revolution of the earth on it axis, is exactly an evening and a morning, or one day.

Furthermore we read, "the evening and the morning were the first day." The word "day" in the Hebrew is the word yom and every time the word yom is used with a numerical adjective - first, fifth, 100th, 90th- every time day is used with a number in front of it, it refers to a literal day. There is no exception, to this rule in the Bible unless you want to make Genesis 1 that exception, which would appear to be a very shaky position.

In the fourteenth verse we find, "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." We understand what a day is in the context because the term "year" is also used. It is very problematical to make the word "day" stand for long periods of time, a thousand years or so, a million years of so, because then what would the word "year" stand for? The verse says these lights were given for days and years. In Exodus 20 we read, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six says shalt thou labor, and do thy work: But the seventh day it is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it." (Exodus 20:8-11) Here in the midst of the Ten Commandments - and in reality this is the basis for one of the commandments, the sixth - we have those same concepts. God states that in six days He, the Lord, made the heavens and earth, the sea, and make everything that is in the heavens, everything that is in the earth, and everything that is in the sea, and He rested on the seventh day. Because of that, man should also work six days and rest that seventh day and remember to worship God on that day. Here, the word yamin, days in the plural, as with every other time it is used in the Old Testament, refers to literal days. God says that in six days He made heaven, earth, and the sea and all that in them is. So we find that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, the beginning tool place six days before the completion, and these days were literal days.

What is meant by literal says? One revolution of the earth on its axis, one solar day. You may use the term 24-hour day if you wish. There is nothing in our experience to indicate that the days were ever appreciably different in length. God said in six days He created the heavens and the earth.

cont'd

But When?

We still may ask the question, exactly when was the beginning? Many of our science books tell us that the beginning took place some 4 1/2 billion years ago, some textbooks say 6 billion years ago, a few writers now would like to push the beginning back to 30 billion years. Yet the Bible implies that creation took place rather recently.

Genealogies are given in Genesis 5 and 11. Bishop Ussher used a strict time sequence and calculated from the genealogies that creation took place in 4004 B.C. A strict time sequence need not be used but we must still recognize the fact that God revealed them for a purpose and they should be considered. Harold Camping has worked on them using father-son relationships and grandfather-grandson relationships. He proposes that in the genealogies each successive recorded patriarch was born the year his named predecessor died. This principle of interpretation derives from the genealogies a chronology which places the beginning at 11,013 B.C. Only one method is correct and further study will help us determine the answer. Still, God included these genealogies for a purpose. Since it is unreasonable to insert long periods of time, say billions of years, into genealogical record, Biblical chronology plainly clashes with current scientific estimates of the age of the earth. Ussher's date of 4004 B.C. or 6000 years ago is quite different from 4 1/2 billion years. When exactly did the beginning take place?

The Age of the Earth

Many theologians have said we cannot accept Genesis because it does not agree with what scientists tell us. Before we accept this viewpoint, let us look closer and see what scientists are actually saying.

Picture in your mind a burning candle. It is six inches and burns at the rate of one inch per hour. My question: How long has this candle been burning? It will burn for six hours more, that is true. But it cannot be determined how long the candle has been burning unless one small insignificant fact is known -- how long was the candle when it was lit? If it were 100 miles high it has been burning for a long time. If it were 10 inches high and is now six inches, burning at the rate of one inch per hour it has been burning for four hours. But we do not know its size in the beginning, so how long has the candle been burning?

This candle illustrates serious problems implicit in various dating methods used to determine the age of the earth. Sometimes we get the impression from school books and the news media that when a scientist picks up a rock he can immediately tell how old it is. But instead, the scientist examines the rock using various assumptions. Several of the principle dating methods used in determining the age of rock depend on the slow transformation of the elements uranium to lead or thorium to lead. To explain how these methods work. let us assume that we have found a rock which was pure uranium. There are no rocks of pure uranium, but we are going to assume so for our experiment. If we are to determine how old this particular rock is we must first know a few things about uranium. Uranium has a half-life of 4 1/2 billion years. What does that mean? It means that if we find a rock of pure uranium, in 4 1/2 billion years half of that rock will change into another element, lead. This is called a radioactive decay process. So in 4 1/2 billion years our rock will be half uranium, half lead. If we wait another 4 1/2 billion years, half of the remaining uranium will change to lead, leaving us with one-quarter uranium and three-quarters lead. Half of any given amount of uranium will decay or change into lead in a 4 1/2 billion year period. That is the half life of uranium.

Based on that, we find a rock, determine how much uranium is present, how much lead is present, and we can therefore determine how old that particular rock is. But notice the uncertainties. Return to our candle illustration again. As the candle burns, scientists can make guesses, although in science such guesses are called assumptions, to determine how long the candle has been burning. These assumptions need to be made in order to answer our question. As the candle burns it gives off an amount of carbon dioxide. It would be relatively simple to measure all the carbon dioxide in the room and therefore assume it came from the candle. This would help to determine how long our candle has been burning. Any problems? We must assume that the people in the room watching the experiment are breathing and as they breathe they give off carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also naturally present in the room This is unfortunate for those doing the measuring because carbon dioxide from breathing is exactly the same as the carbon dioxide in the room which is the same as carbon dioxide from a burning candle. There are three different sources for the carbon dioxide. If I assume all the carbon dioxide comes from the candle, I may assume the candle was 620 million miles high and burning 4 1/2 billion years.

A similar problem exists when a rock containing uranium is dated. We can find the amount of lead present, even the various isotopes of lead, lead 206, 207, 208, and know that they came from various isotopes of uranium, or in the case of lead 208, from thorium. We can determine how much uranium is present and how much lead. If we assume all of the lead came from the parent element uranium we will calculate a certain age. However, that may or may not be the actual age. Why? Lead is naturally present everywhere in the crust of the earth, lead that cannot be traced to radioactive decay. How, then, can lead be a dependable indicator of age?

Lead 208 is the end product of the thorium-lead dating system. Thorium is called the parent and lead the daughter. If a rock contains lead 208 and this is a consistent system, thorium should also be present; but rocks from certain mines in Katanga, Africa, and other mines in Canada, contain lead 208 naturally present with no thorium present. This requires an entirely different means of explaining where the lead 208 came from.

Dr. Melvin Cook (Ph.D., Chemistry from Yale University) postulates that it came from neutron capture, although there are other excellent ways of explaining this situation. According to Dr. Cook, the uranium-thorium-lead clock points to zero, (meaning the hands of the clock have not moved). If all these various isotopes of lead can be accounted for on the basis of neutron capture then uranium-thorium-lead systems do not provide a very reliable dating method. If we erroneously assume that all the lead came from uranium or thorium we get an age which is erroneous, an age that is too old. In reality, we do not know exactly where that lead came from. We are assuming it came from a decay process, but that basic assumption has been shown to be false in certain specific instances. Therefore an age of 4 1/2 billion years must also be false and the alleged earth age of 4 1/2 billion years cannot be relied upon.

The Age of the Earth

Let us go back to our candle. A close observation shows wax was dripping down the side. Assuming the wax drips at a constant rate, we can determine how long the candle has been burning by measuring the wax drippings every hour. Divide the amount for one hour into the total amount of wax drippings and thus calculate how long our candle has been burning. If we find six hours of wax drippings, it is fairly reasonable to assume the candle has been burning six hours -- provided of course our rate does not change so that we get exactly the same number of wax drippings every hour. Remember, we have made this assumption. We may have problems with it, but it seems reasonable because the people in the room do not breathe out wax and there is no was naturally present. We can be reasonably sure that all the wax came from that decay process. Therefore, since we have six hours worth of wax and the candle burns one inch per hour, the candle was 12 inches high when it was lit.

Our rock has a by-product too. As uranium decays into lead and as thorium decays into lead, they give off helium. As far as we can tell the helium being formed on the earth escapes into the upper atmosphere but is trapped there. Scientists have not shown that helium escapes our atmosphere. We do know that helium is being added to our atmosphere by the solar winds, streams of high velocity charged atoms from the sun. The total amount of helium in our atmosphere today can be accounted for at the present rate of decay of uranium and thorium alone, ignoring other sources, within the last 12,000 years. If helium from the solar wind, meteorites, and other sources is also taken into account, the age becomes even younger. What am I saying? I am saying that scientifically, it is impossible for the earth to be 4 1/2 billion or 6 billion years old on the basis of these dating methods because there is simply not enough helium, not enough by-product present. The total amount can be accounted for within the last 10-12,000 years, which means 12,000 years is a good maximum age four the earth. Remember, too, that we are assuming a beginning with no helium which is unreasonable because helium is the second most abundant element in the universe.

Scientists whose theory of evolution desperately needs a very old earth adopt a set of assumptions which yield a great age for the earth. but again, that is what they are setting out to prove and so that is what they are looking for. They ignore many of the young earth dating methods. One of these methods depends on the nitrate content of the oceans and its rate of flow into the oceans. This ocean nitrate dating method gives a maximum age for the ocean of 13,000 years. Evolutionary scientists also ignore the fact that meteorite dust falls on our planet at such a rate that if it has been falling for 4 1/2 billion years at the same rate, we would be walking at the bottom of a pile of meteorite dust at least 150 feet thick. Obviously we do not find that much dust. Erosion would eventually work it into the earth, but the high concentration of nickel and iron should make it easily identifiable, especially in the oceans. It has not been traced.

Dr. Cook postulates over 100 different evidences that show the earth to be no older that 10,000 to 100,000 years. His personal calculations would indicate that the earth is no older than about 10,000 years at a maximum. Dr. Donald Chittick (Ph.D., Chemistry from Oregon State) also feels the earth is quite young. He says the earth’s age is around 5,000 - 6,000 years but he is willing to allow it to go back a little further in order to fit the Biblical chronology.

There are many evidences for a young earth but we do not hear about them. Why? The various dating methods proposed by the evolutionists support the concept that the earth is old, for unless the earth is old, evolution is impossible. How do they support that? They build a framework of assumptions, fit their numbers into it, and come up with the answers they want. As an illustration, choose any number; add 12 to it; divide by 2; subtract the number you started with from the number you have now and the answer will be 6. We worked out the formula and it provided us with the answer, I supplied a few unknowns in order to provide you with the answer six and regardless of what number you choose in the beginning, six will be the answer. But we have not proven anything, we have simply manipulated numbers to come up with a preconceived answer. In reality we have proven nothing. In the Bible, God tells us that in the beginning He created the heaven and the earth. The beginning was six days before the completion, the days were literal days, and the beginning took place somewhere within the last 6,000 to 12,000 years. Now that we have determined when God created, let us examine what He says He did.

All Right, What Happened?

Many of the readers of the Bible infer from the first verse of Genesis that God created a full-blown universe exactly as we know it today. But that is not what the verse says. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) What is heaven? Stars? No, the stars are hung in heaven. Not planets, not the sun; all these things are hung in heaven. The word "heaven," shamayim, means an expanse and in this case it refers in its broadest sense to space. In the beginning God created space and earth. We have to comprehend that which is difficult for us as finite beings: before Genesis 1:1 there existed absolutely nothing except God. We do not know what nothing is. We consider space nothing, but there was not even space before this particularly verse. There was no matter or mass; no such thing as time. All these things came into existence when God called them into existence. He created here a heaven and an earth.

The earth was nothing like the sphere you and I now see. It is described for us in Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Hebrew words for "without form and void," tohu vabohu, basically mean empty and a vacuum. Empty and lifeless. Isaiah 45:18 tells us that "...God himself that formed the earth and made: he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else." In this particular verse in Genesis we have a description of an earth empty and uninhabited.

No people could live on the planet in this condition because there is no atmosphere, no sun, nothing that would support life. In fact, there is not even dry land. We find that the earth was empty and lifeless and that darkness was upon the face of the deep and that the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. Darkness covered this body and the Spirit of God moved upon this planet. Space is created and mass is expressed in the form of the earth covered with water and time is indicated by the movement of the Spirit. Some consider darkness a problem, that darkness must be evidence of sin. But may I remind you that in verse three God simply created light and separated light from darkness. The darkness does not refer to sin. To be consistent, it simply refers to the absence of light.

A Little Light Please

God solves the darkness by creating light, "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." (Genesis 1:3-5)

Verses 6-8 say: "And God said, Let three be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And god mad the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day." This body of water now rotates and we have a system of day-night because God has created a light source.

Some Atmosphere

God now separates the waters to waters above the earth and waters on the earth itself. He creates an expanse between, a firmament which He calls heaven, and in doing so He created an atmosphere. Water vapor in the upper atmosphere created a canopy of water, filtering out the light from the light source, crating the conditions necessary for life on this planet. We do not find life on the other planets because they do not have an atmosphere capable of supporting life. They have no liquid water which is essential for life.

Now earth conditions are such that God began to create life on the third day. "And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas; and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit trees yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day." (Genesis 1:9-13) God gathered all the water on the earth in one place and let dry land appear. Out of the earth He called up plants and grass and herb yielding seed, fruit trees yielding fruit, all to reproduce after their respective kinds. The earth now has vegetation springing up out of the dry land. So God is responsible for the origin of life.

The Origin of Life

The evolutionist explains that life began in some primordial sea. According to the Russian scientist Oparin, life began in an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor. Electrical discharges coming through this atmosphere created the first building blocks of life -- amino acids. An experiment performed by Stanley Miller, for which he won the Nobel Prize, placed this type of atmosphere in his laboratory, generated electrical sparks and produce amino acids. Though far from being life, amino acids are the basic building blocks of living cells, and from them other developments could ultimately produce the first cell. This would be like having a fraction of one brick in the corner of a fifty story building (considering the building as the cell). It is a long way from the whole, but evolutionists insist that it represents a step in our understanding of how life began.

Interestingly, however, the sun’s rays penetrating through an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water vapor would destroy any amino acids to depth of fifteen meters in the ocean. Amino acids formed in the upper atmosphere would quickly disintegrate again. The way to prevent that is to add oxygen to the atmosphere. If there is oxygen in the atmosphere, ozone (° 3) will form; but the ozone filters out the ultra-violet, which is so lethal that it could kill almost every form of life on the planet, even penetrating as much as 30 feet under the surface of the oceans. With the addition of oxygen the ultra-violet light from the sun is filtered out and amino acids are no longer destroyed.

A Problem

But note an additional problem: in an atmosphere of methane, ammonia hydrogen, water vapor and oxygen one can generate electrical sparks all day long and never produce any amino acids. With oxygen present they cannot be produced; without oxygen they cannot exist. A scientist may demonstrate something within a controlled situation in a laboratory, but in the earth itself he would encounter this interesting paradox. Life could not come about this way.

We frequently hear about experiments creating life in the laboratory. Suppose man develops an apparatus allowing him to duplicate, make, or form life in a laboratory? Does that disprove the Bible? Does it prove evolution to be true? Not at all. It would merely show that it takes intelligence to create life. Man with all his accumulated scientific knowledge since the beginning of time, man with all of his technical advances, man with all of his billions of dollars of laboratory equipment would be finally have been able to duplicate something that God originated in the beginning. But at the same time that would totally disprove the idea that life could ever come about by chance. The creation of life demands intelligence, design and planning. Neither chance nor matter have these properties. It is totally unreasonable to believe that dead matter is responsible for life and all the complexities we observe today. Yet evolutionists continually speak about life beginning in such a manner.

In Berkeley, California, where scientists reportedly created life in a test tube, they took living cells and extracted the DNA molecules which contain the coded information of cells. When this DNA was placed in a test tube with an energy supplying chemical, nothing happened. But when the DNA-produced enzyme from other living cells was added, the DNA reproduced. But this is like cutting your hand off, sewing it back on again, and saying you created a hand. Actually, all you have done is rearrange life. You may have learned a few things, but you have not created because you began with life and ended with life. Only an experiment beginning exclusively with the molecules would fairly test the hypothesis.

That's What They Say

Most evolutionists declare that life somehow began by spontaneous generation from non-living material. Life came from some type of matter. But about the same time that Charles Darwin and Mendel were performing experiments, a gentleman named Louis Pasteur startled the scientific world. One of his experiments concerned spontaneous generation. Until his day it was believed that if one left rags in the corner, mice would appear. Frogs were created spontaneously in pond water. Meat left unrefrigerated would produce maggots. Wheat would generate rats. Experiments by Francisco Redi and others had demonstrated that this did not hold true, but people still believed that on the bacteriological bacteria were formed spontaneously.

Pasteur announced that because of his belief in God he would disprove the idea of spontaneous generation. He accordingly developed a flask with an "S" curve on the end which allowed air to enter but trapped dust and bacteria in the neck of the flask so that the nutrient broth in the bottom remained germ free. He performed the experiment several times. Each time he demonstrated something, scientists set up an objection, but he answered that objection the next time he performed the experiment. Some of these flasks are still in a museum in France, and even after more than 100 year there are no bacteria in the broth. He demonstrated once and for all that life does not come into existence from non-livening material. He helped establish the great law of biology that life comes from living material: the law of biogenesis. A sub-law states that life reproduces after its kind. Cats give birth to cats, dog to dogs; two rabbits never give birth to an elephant. Pasteur helped establish this law.

They Still Believe It!

One would think that this signaled the death blow to the idea of spontaneous generation. It cannot be observed, it cannot be demonstrated - we cannot prove it, we cannot verify it --and all experiments confirm just the opposite. Yet we find scientist such as George Wald, a recognized evolutionary biologist, asserting that we teach the experiments of Pasteur to our students as if this were a triumph of science over mysticism. He personally that life in the beginning did arise by spontaneous generation because the only alternative is to believe in God, and he regards this as unscientific. We ask in turn, how much science is involved in believing something which is totally negated by all scientific experiments? He holds this position not because of great overwhelming scientific evidence for spontaneous generation, but because of his preconceived ideas, personal prejudice, opinion, and disbelief in God. And he holds that position on faith.

Calculate, if you , the odds against life ever coming about spontaneously. Take an 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper and put the number "1" in the upper left-hand corner. Type zeros after it, single spaced, until you fill up the whole page with zeros; turn the sheet over and type additional zeros upon the entire page. Continue filling pages with zeros until you produce a volume three inches thick. Compile enough volumes to spread across the United States. Stack volumes until they reach past the moon. That is the number of volumes necessary to contain the number of chances to one that life would ever come about by spontaneous generation. Not impossible, but highly unlikely. To hold that position, one is exercising faith, not upholding evidence which is overwhelmingly in his favor. Such a position is held basically because as Wald says, one chooses not to believe in God.

The thesis here is that with infinite time and no creative power life could appear. Yet the Bible maintains that with no time and God as absolute power, life came into existence. Recognize that infinite time and zero power can accomplish nothing, but no time and infinite power can accomplish anything.

By Faith

The evolutionist would tell you not only that life by some miracle advanced to that first cell, a mathematical miracle, but that when life evolved to the first one-celled amoeba, it was more than halfway to man. That cell which is vastly different from man, that little protozoan, was more than half way up on the evolutionary scale. We have already observed the complexity required to come up with that first cell itself. Undaunted, however, evolutionists usually begin with the single cell and proceed to tell us how it could diversify. We begin to hear of natural selections and mutation. Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer are famous for their views of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Basically this means that of any given set of animals on the earth, those that are more fit to survive will survive. this is supposed to explain why certain animals exist presently and others are extinct. But that type of explanation still does not account for the existence of the fit. The premise advances a survival of the fittest, natural selection: nature weeds out those that are unfit. But it does not explain how animals got here, and again the law of biogenesis must be in effect. How do we explain the different species, the different varieties of animals on the earth?

Hugo Devries introduced the idea of mutations -- random changes in the genetic structure. What this really means is that some freak accident or change takes place in the organism. Huxley, a leading evolutionist, proposed that 99 out of 100 mutations are lethal or harmful, and Dobzhansky raised that figure to 999 out of 1000. Dr. Walter Lammerts, a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, producer of sixteen prize-winning American roses and former director of research for the Germain Seed Company, states that all mutations are lethal or harmful or at least neutral. He speaks with authority, for he obtained his rose varieties by exposing them to neutron radiation and other influences in order to induce them to grow differently. From his college studies he was under the impression that a rose would continue to improve by artificial selection until one produced a rose with petals six or eight inches long. But he found certain limits. He was able in one generation to increase the growth and gain a petal one-quarter inch longer, the second generation about one-eighth inch longer, and the third generation another one-eighth inch -- but then the process reached a point where increased petal length was no longer produced. It had evidently come to the potential of that particular plant. One thing he learned for certain: he was never able to change one species of plant into another species of plant.

More on Mutations

Dr. Lammerts also refers to the experiments performed on the fruit fly. Scientists have taken this fly and bombarded it with gamma rays, X-rays, and the like, producing numerous mutant forms of flies. They have developed a little fruit fly with no wings. with wrinkled wings, with half wings, with eight legs, with six legs, with red eyes, black eyes, no eyes. But the have never turned a fruit fly into a mosquito or anything else. The experiment began with fruit flies and ended with weaker forms of fruit flies. In the experiments most of the mutations were leather. Causing a mutation is like trying to improve your television set by throwing rocks at it with the hope that one of 1000 rocks ill improve it and change a black and white set into a color set. What is not considered in mutations is that 999 steps are working in the wrong direction. One could walk from America to China by taking one step forward and 999 backwards. He may get there, but he will be going the wrong direction. That is no progress. Mutations always take away. In fact, no single favorable mutation has ever been found.

Kettlewell's research with moths is taught in biology as "an excellent evidence of evolution" -- a supposed example of evolution in progress. There are dark moths and white moths. At the beginning of Kettlewell’s research, he found that in England there were more white moths than dark moths. The trees in the area were light-colored; the white moths blended into the trees very well, whereas the darker ones were easily seen by the birds who picked them up for food. Because of the Industrial Revolution, smoke and soot began to fill the trees, and now the dark moths blended in better and the birds found the white moths. He reported that he had observed evolution. To the contrary: he had white moths and dark moths in the beginning and white and dark moths in the end. He had perhaps demonstrated survival of the fittest -- that one is a little more fit to survive because it blends in with the protective environment -- but he had not demonstrated evolution because the moths had not really changed.

Scientists speak about the fly becoming resistant to DDT as evidence of evolution. However, the fly was a fly before and is a fly now. No one has ever demonstrated or proved that a fly more resistant to DDT has evolved. All that can really be said is that a number of flies were sprayed, and those not resistant to DDT died. Are we observing evolution when we take a fly that is now supposedly resistant to DDT and note that it produces fewer offspring and its life span is shorter than flies that were not sprayed? Is that favorable to the fly as a whole? He has adapted, perhaps, but the process does not explain how flies could change into mosquitoes or whatever is higher than flies. for it was a fly before and remains a fly after.

Mutations do not explain anything new appearing, but instead show degeneration. The merely tell us that if there were a time on earth when nothing lived but fish. By mutations alone one could never find anything but different forms of fish. Horses could never be produced because horses have characteristics that fish do not.

Oops!

Because of inaccuracies in certain theories concerning mutations and natural selection, an excellent scientist, an evolutionist named Goldschmidt, proposed a mechanism to oppose Darwinian evolution, his "Hopeful Monster Theory." It was his idea that two reptiles mated, an egg was laid, and out popped a parakeet. He suggested that major mutations occurred all at once and everything was rearranged correctly to produce a bird. Of course, most of the birds died, but a few lived. There had to be two reptiles to mate and produce an egg,, out of which came a bird. During that bird's lifetime the same miraculous event would have to occur someplace else in the vicinity. If both birds were male, of course, the race would die. Goldschmidt presented an interesting case against evolution. Those neo-Darwinists who accept natural selection and mutation feel that they present an equally good case against Goldschmidt. I tend to disagree with both. The Bible provides an excellent explanation and lacks the inherent problems of the other theories.

A group of evolutionary mathematicians held a symposium at the Wistar Institute, the report of which was published under the title Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution. Mathematicians and a group of evolutionary biologists met to make presentations on natural selection and mutations. The mathematicians assumed that only one out of 1000 mutations are favorable. Not considering the effects of the 999 harmful mutations, they still showed it to be mathematically impossible for evolution by mutations and natural selection alone to account for all of the various life forms living on the earth today, even allowing for six billions years of evolution -- or, for that matter, 36 billion years. Fortunately, the Biblical viewpoint that God created all things, that God created life, provides us with a better explanation for the origin of all things. God even tells us about the origin of the sun and the moon.

Let's Have the Sun in the Morning
and the Moon at Night

In the fourteenth verse God rearranges His light source. "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and over the night. and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day." (Genesis 1:14-19)

At this point God created the sun, moon, and stars. Why didn't He leave things alone? He had a light source and He had day and night. God in His infinite wisdom, explained the need for such a change. Knowing us as He did even before He created us, He knew of our need for time. There was time in the movement of the earth, day and night, but no system for telling time. If I were to ask how old you were under the first system, the light source created in day one (vs. 3), you would simply reply that you were 5644 day-nights. Certainly this is not a convenient system for determining time. So God created a sun, moon, and stars. These were made for signs, seasons, days and years.

We understand that the rotation of the earth itself divides the days. the moon going around the earth provides us with the months. and the earth traveling around the sun provides us with the years. The moon affects the tides and also determines season. So for signs and seasons, days and years, God created sun, moon, and stars so man might know when to plant and when to harvest.

Verse 16 says that God made two great lights, "...the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." I love the end of that verse. Think of the power that is displayed in almost a post script: by the way, He made the stars also. Stars are pretty fantastic when you think of them, millions and billions of stars, so many we cannot even count them. God just mentions almost in passing, that He made the stars. As we go out into the evening and look up to the heavens, we learn something about our God. He is a God that is so almighty, having such unmeasurable power, that instantly He can create all those stars. Man cannot yet explain where they come from, yet God said they were created for signs, seasons, days, and years. I believe these were made by simply taking existing light source and spreading it out through the heavens. In Psalms we read that God "spreadeth abroad the heavens by his fingers." The heavens and the firmament are the work of His hands, His special creation.

Some people may ask how we can have literal or solar days before the sun was made. Refer back to Exodus 20:11. This verse does not distinguish between three days which were very long before the sun and three days which were literal days after the sun was created. It says simply six days, referring to them as exactly the same. The numerical adjective is used in describing both. God tells us of a period of evening and morning and so we learn that in four literal days God has now created the heavens, filled it with stars and supplied the earth with plant life.

In the Air and the Sea

"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day." (Genesis 1:20-23)

Now God begins to create animal life. We read here the fact that all the animals in the sea were created to reproduce after their kind; we also have the statement that fowl were created. Both of these creations are serious problems to those who try to postulate the process of evolution. The word in verse 21 which is translated whales means large sea creatures, but I would like to use the whale as an example.

A Word About Whales

The whale is a mammal, warm blooded, air breathing, and gives birth to its young alive. The baby sperm whale is 14 feet long at birth. Immediately it must be pushed to the surface to breathe; otherwise, it will drown. It drinks milk directly from its mother, approximately 1 1/2 tons of milk a day. Because the whale is a mammal, it cannot be directly related to a fish. Try to explain the whale’s existence by the process of evolution.

Once upon a time, little sea creatures somehow developed vertebrae or back bones and became fish. These fish decided they did not like it in the water and so they evolved off their front fins into legs, developed hind legs and changed their tail fins into a long thin tail. Their breathing apparatus changed from gills to slits to noses and they became amphibians and somehow developed the ability to stop laying soft jelly-like eggs. Then somehow these amphibians became reptiles, changing various important bones in their ears and jaws. The reptiles somehow changed to become mammals. These mammals did not like it on the land and decided they wanted to go back to the sea. So they somehow evolved off their hind legs, changed their front legs into fins. evolved the dorsal fin, changed their long thin tails into a tail fin, changed their breathing apparatus from their noses to the blow hole on top of their heads, and returned to the sea becoming dolphins and whales. Somewhere in this process they picked up their amazing sonar ability.

We now have a problem because there are too many ancestors, too many links to follow and no evidence that this process ever took place.

Birds Do It

The same is true of birds. Those same little sea creatures must develop backbones and somehow become fish. These fish evolve off their front fins and evolve front legs, evolve back legs, evolve off their tail fin into a long thin tail, change their breathing apparatus from gill slits to noses, become amphibians and change the shape of their eggs from jelly-like to hard-shelled and finally become reptiles. somehow these reptiles developed certain changes in the structure of their front legs. These changes were passed on through generations until their front legs looked liked winged appendages. Some of these appendages got so large they dragged on the rocks and became tattered. These tattered appendages were passed on to offspring until the tattered and frayed legs looked like feathered ones. One day some of these reptiles, flapping their large feathered appendages, took off and became birds. Wings can be tacked onto just about anything but that does not mean the object will fly. The creature must be aerodynamically designed for flight capability.

Thoughtful analysis of Darwin’s own concept of natural selection and survival of the fittest soon convinces us that birds could never have come into existence by this process. According to Darwin the animal that is unfit to survive will not survive. Consider two reptiles who are competing for survival, one with normal legs and one with large feathered appendages hanging out to get trapped in rocks and caught in trees. The latter reptile is not fit to survive, and would die out before he ever learns to fly. Other possibilities have been presented to explain the appearance of birds. Remember Goldschmidts’s "hopeful monster theory" because he realized Darwinism was a failure. This theory proposed, for example, that a reptile laid an egg and a bird hatched. One problem with this is that another reptile had to lay another egg and another gird had to hatch. One of the two hopeful monsters had to be a female and the other a male. Both had to be born in the same locale. Biologically this is impossible. That much change because of that much mutation could not possibly produce an animal able to survive.

Those who use the Bible as their authority do not have these problems. The Bible states that God created great whales and every living creature that moves in the sea as well as great winged fowl to fly above the earth. And God saw that His creation was good. Each was created and designed to live in its own special environment, created to reproduce after its kind and this accounts for the differences among the animals. The great Designer planned these creatures to live and multiply and fill the earth. "The evening and the morning were the fifth day."

In the Image of God

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after his kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kink: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. so God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he the." (Genesis 1:24-27)

The Bible states that man was created in the image of God, after the likeness of God. Notice that it does not say he is to be one of the fish of the sea, one of the fowl of the air, one of the cattle, one of the creeping things upon the earth, or one of the beasts of the earth. It says he is to have dominion over them. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines man as simply the highest of the animal kingdom, Homo Sapiens, the highest of the beasts. God does not say this. Man was created separate and apart to have dominion over all the other creatures.

The Fossil Record

Does the fossil record present a problem to what God says in His word concerning the origin of man? Anthropologists, constantly uncovering human bones, tell us exactly how long ago they think these people lived, what they were, where they live, and the importance of their place in man’s ancestry. How do they obtain all this information and how trustworthy is it?

We begin with the Cambrian strata, supposed to be the oldest rock strata containing fossils. Note first a major mystery in the fossil record: the outburst of life in the so-called Cambrian period, though there should be billions of years of evolution represented before this. Tremendous amounts of sedimentary rock were laid down before the Cambrian yet they contain no fossils. The great index fossil of the Cambrian rocks is the trilobite, presumed to be one of the earliest forms of life. (An index fossil is a particular type of fossil presumed to identify rock formations or strata.) Trilobites are really very complex little animals with a nervous system and cilia, or hairs, protruding from their sides to propel them alone. With compound eyes and antennae, they are certainly not primitive animals. Evolutionists claim that once life evolved to the one-celled animal, we were more than halfway to man. A trilobite is much farther up that scale, yet we have no record of evolutionary development before it. Trilobites and most other invertebrates are found represented in the Cambrian strata.

My files include a photograph of a particular fossil acquisition in the Cambrian strata. About twenty little trilobites are imbedded in rock in what appears to be a sandal print. This presents a slight problem. The sandal print had to be formed while the trilobites were still living; no other logical explanation can be conceived. However, after scanning this photo carefully one paleontologist at the University of Utah stated that the whole print must be a new type of trilobite that we have never seen before. He is talking about trilobite fossils in what would appear to be a ten-inch sandal print which has deeper impressions in the heel mark area than in the toe.

The uncovering of other fossils in Texas tend to make man contemporary with dinosaurs if the findings are accepted at face value. For instance, human prints were located in the same strata with dinosaur prints in the Paluxy river bed in Glen Rose, Texas. in locating the eight track in one series, we pumped out the water and scraped off the debris until we came to the rock sheet on the bottom where we found the print in limestone. This human track crossed a three-toed dinosaur track, and one could discern fainter prints going on out into the river. Recently a gentleman who is continuing work on this project has found four good sized tracks, approximately sixteen inches long and nine inches across, revealing toes. As more research is completed in the Glen Rose area, a number of questions concerning man will be answered.

Fossil Man

How do we confront the claims of those scientists who state that the remains of pre-historic men have been found? The Neanderthal man was for many years considered one of man’s ancestors. Evolutionists suggested that he lived some 80,000 years ago -- the dating depends upon which book one reads. Recently it was discovered that Neanderthal is really not much different from modern man. Because the first Neanderthal skeleton found had a curvature of the spine, scientists were certain that the skeleton with a curved spine was good evidence that man did not always walk upright. Then the found skeletons of Neanderthal which stood perfectly upright. Subsequently the first skeletons with curvature of the spine were re-examined and found to have suffered from a form of arthritis. In essence, we located an early ancestor with an arthritic problem.

Study the skull of the first Neanderthal. Byron Nelson took the side view and compared it to a painting of the Revolutionary War hero LaFayette. He found that one can put his features on the skull without any difficulty at all. A Neanderthal skull can be make to look very modern or very primitive depending on how the reconstruction is made. If skull capacity means anything, the Neanderthal man has a capacity larger than modern man, about 1600 cc. Modern man has somewhere between 1200 and 1500 cc. If brain capacity means anything, Neanderthal man would be more intelligent than modern man. Brain capacity may not be the whole answer, but Neanderthal has been identified as very similar to modern man.

The Peking Man has an interesting story. Records and accounts of several men such as Boule and even Chardin, avowed evolutionists who were on the scene in China, state that they never found any fossil men there. They merely found skulls of macaques and gibbons and a few perfectly human skulls. Then the personnel changed on the dig itself, and the third or fourth leader started making extraordinary proposals for the skulls found. A major problem exists today: none of these skulls is available. Drawings and casts of the skulls exist, but the actual skulls were supposedly lost during World War II. Frankly, we are entitled to doubt "scientific" claims when the evidence is missing and the story has progressively improved through the accounts of the individuals who headed up the various excavations.

Java Man, Pithecanthropus Erectus, was found by a man named Dubois. Pictures in the museums and reconstruction’s of the complete body, including all of the hairs of his head, suggest that the specimen must have been quite intact. One never gets the impression that excavators found only a piece of a skull cap, a femur, and a thigh bone! Dubois reported thirty years after the original disclosures that the skull cap of the Java Man was nothing more than the skull cap of a silver gibbon. He also admitted to finding human skulls 15-20 feet away, but he his these in his basement because he did not understand their full significance. Yet Java Man is still presented in textbooks as one of our ancestors in a long, long line of evolutionary development.

You are probably aware of Piltdown Man, which has a perfect skull cap of a man and an ape-like jaw bone. Unfortunately, they do not match. One is fossilized, one is not. One has been fossilized for a length of time, whereas on is modern. The teeth of the ape have filed down to make them look human in appearance. For some thirty years this was reported as the greatest proof for evolution. The original skull was not accessible, but casts and drawings were placed in many museums. Some time late, determining that the skulls should be carefully re-examined, scientists applied fluorine and other tests. Skull pieces were shown to have different ages. The Piltdown Man in reality was composed of the jay bone of an ape and the skull cap of a man. This hoax, presented in all of the textbooks, was decisively unmasked by Kenneth Oakley and published in magazines and scientific journals. Scientists claim that with new modern dating methods such a mistake could never be made again.

An individual found a tooth in a Nebraska field, He mailed this particular tooth back east to some scientists who were fascinated with such an amazing find. here, they felt, was proof of early man on the North American continent. This was their first evidence, so they published an article concerning the significance of the find. The London Daily Illustrated News displayed a full-page spread on Nebraska Man -- Hesperopithecus Harold Cookii -- Harold Cook’s "Ape of the West." They reconstructed this creature from his tooth, exhibiting his exact shape, even to the extreme brow ridges and the broad shoulders. More significant was the fact that they reconstructed not only his from, but that of his wife as well. So here are Mr. and Mrs. Hesperopithecus, reconstructed from a tooth. Back in Nebraska they were able to find the entire jaw bone. Then they fit the tooth into the jaw bone -- and to their horror, the jaw bone was that of a pig. Well, men will make mistakes; such is scientific frailty.

Zinjanthropus is reconstructed from 400 fragments of skull, the largest of which is the size of a silver dollar. One who views a good picture of the skull usually wonders what it could be, for doesn’t really look like any type of skull. Yet it is said to be from one of our ancestors. An interesting corollary to the problem is the lava flow immediately under the bed in which Zinjanthropus is found. Under Zinjanthropus Leaky found Homo Habilis, supposedly a more modern man. Evolutionists explain that this bed is overturned, and thus the Zinjanthropus is indeed one of our ancestors -- some one and three-quarter millions of years old. The lava flow underneath, when dated by potassium-argon, gives a lesser age of 1.3 million years. Problems are involved in the dating of lava flows by potassium-argon. Recently a lava flow formed in 1801 in Hawaii was dated by the potassium-argon method and found to have an age of 230 million years. Since the lava flow took place in modern times, one wonders about the accuracy of this dating system. Certainly there is strong evidence against the acceptance of the potassium-argon dates given to Zinjanthropus. We will never know three things about Zinjanthropus from looking at the pieces of skull. One, we will never rally know what his fleshy parts looked like. Two, we will never know if he had the capacity to think. Three, we will never know if he had the capacity to speak. These are the three criteria for man. In fact, if Zinjanthropus were living today, we might find him caged in a zoo with a special name for him and other supposed ancestors of man. Or we may find him a type of man which has become extinct before our time; we will never know for sure by merely looking at the bones.

Ramapithecus was built around a few fragments, some of which are teeth. Scientists say the teeth are humanoid, human-like. But there is a baboon living in Ethiopia today which has the same teeth as Ramapithecus. How can we decide whether the teeth rally belong ton ancestor or to one of these baboons?

What Have We Learned?

We have the tendency to think that if something is primitive, it is very old. In fact, when looking at a skull, anthropologists consistently judge that the older it is, the more primitive it must be. However, such a conclusion cannot be gained just from looking at the skull itself. What, then is the significance of picking up skulls and fragments of skulls? What can we really learn by looking at a few bones? Not very much. When we consider that many of these creatures are reconstructed from a few teeth, a jaw bone, a small piece of skull, what is really being demonstrated? When one realizes that scientists cannot date the skull itself to determine how old it is, nor directly date the strata (sedimentary layer laid down by water) in which it is found, what is the significance of the ages placed upon these creatures?

In discussing and looking for primitive man, anthropologists seem to proceed with one preconceived idea in their minds -- mind has evolved. Because of this, the have tried to demonstrate the ancestry of man. With this basic assumption they present what they claim as evidence to support the idea and have made conclusions depending upon the assumptions involved. Nothing is ever said about the missing links between birds and reptiles, vertebrates and invertebrates, although a great deal of time is spent talking about the missing link between man and the ape. Even here the evolutionists cannot agree as to how man came about. Some say that man and the ape have a common ancestor; some suggest that man and the ape evolved through the same fish; some insist they can trace the ancestry back through separate fish down to separate protozoa; some would tell you that man evolved from the chimpanzee, or from the orangutan. or from the gorilla. (One man actually proposed that this explains the origin of races: the white race from the chimpanzee, the oriental from the orangutan and the Negro from the gorilla.) These are ideas being proposed by scientists as to how man came into existence.

Early Man

We often become overly concerned about men with primitive appearance. The Bible say mankind began with a perfect pair. Diet and environment created people that looked different from other people. Rather than beginning with primitive man and working up to the complex man of today, we are saying that man was more complex, more perfect, in the past. Man has degenerated as time has gone on.

Some anthropologists believe that the civilization cannot be older than 6000 years. If primitive man is older than that, how did he suddenly develop a civilization? Even primitive tribes normally have highly sophisticated cultures. Cultural anthropologists ignore this and, finding a primitive arrowhead or bone, try to determine what the man was like. Life and its activities cannot be reconstructed from a bone or an implement.

In 1971 a man’s skeleton was found in Cretaceous strata in Utah. The findings of the skeleton would tend to disprove the dating of the Cretaceous period at 100 million years ago. However, since the skeleton was pushed over by a bulldozer, it cannot be absolutely determined whether it was washed into the strata, dropped into a cave, or existed at the alleged time the strata was deposited. As creationists we try to take an honest approach to these matters: we are not going to say we have proved our point in this matter without substantial evidence. The evolutionist, however, in many areas has glossed over the evidence. Even when showing the discrepancies, he continues to make claims to support his thesis. A careful reading of Darwin’s Origin of Species will demonstrate the abundance of "Let us suppose," "if we assume," "let us pretend," "if." Phrases such as these are used some 187 times in one chapter, and toward the end of the book Darwin implies that if we have followed him this far, it is not very difficult to go one step further and assume the next step. In essence, what have we gained? A lot of assumptions.

In his book Implications of Evolution, G.A. Kerkut, as an evolutionist, asserts that "to change a present day reptile into a mammal, though of great interest, would not show the way in which the mammals did arise." Thus it would not prove that reptiles turned into mammals because no one was there in the past to see it, and so, unfortunately, this cannot be affirmed. Kerkut reports that evolution is based on seven assumptions -- all of them unproved and unverifiable. He concludes his work (and this is an evolutionist writing, a professor of biochemistry), "The evidence that supports the general theory of evolution, amoeba to man, is not sufficiently strong enough to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis." It is not even good enough to be a theory! Kerkut does not believe in creation, but he has demonstrated to the world that evolution is not proved. When we come to the origin of man, we will have to rid ourselves of some of these preconceived ideas.

Claude Levi Strauss, a leading evolutionary anthropologist, finds no evidence that man is any less intelligent in one area of the world than in another. In the most primitive cultures man’s intelligence is equal. There is no evidence of the evolution of man’s mind. So-called primitive tribes living in remote areas have complex languages and cultures. After they quit pioneering, settle down, and build their cultures, then perhaps they think about God. Only they do not remember the God of the Bible who told them about the Flood; they do not remember the God of Noah. But they know there is a God and thus begin to set up a religion because they see other people establishing religions. Accounts of the past have been handed down by word of mouth. Eventually someone decides to write down all these accounts and tradition. Instead of having an account of the Flood, they come up with the Gilgamesh epic or a Babylonian epic. These have some truth in them but have been perverted by time. The farther away people get from the original center of civilization, the more tendency to create variants. We find, however, in all of the ancient tribes, very strong cultural behavior. They are really not primitive; we just consider them so because we compare them to our standards.

Anthropologists repeatedly point to the findings of skull representing primitive man -- with the shape of the skull reflecting its age. They seem to forget the effects of the environment and diet upon the shape of the human skull. Feed a child a diet in which he has to chew a great deal and the shape of the skull is formed accordingly. Feed another child all soft foods and the skull is again formed quite differently. Deficiencies in vitamins and minerals likewise cause changes in the shape of the bones and skull. It is a mistaken idea to assume that the uglier the skull looks, the more primitive it is. The shape of the skulls considered in this writing have the look of primitives with ridges and extensions of the brow, but these could be accounted for on the basis of dietary deficiency as well as effects of the environment.

Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal remains found in Europe in the area of the culture cradle have a larger brain capacity than modern man. Like modern man, their skull capacity is larger than those in more remote areas. However, brain capacity does not seem to mean much in classifying skulls, although we do have averages which we consider for man. There seems to be evidence that the brain capacity of man in the past was larger. At a distance from the European cultural center one finds smaller skulls, ones that look more primitive. Yet one can find each of these ancient types in individuals living today. These skull are simply nothing more than degenerate forms of Adam and Eve and of Noah, scattered from this cultural center in the last 4300 years.

Some Conclusions

When attempting to look for some type of ancestor, when endeavoring to demonstrate evolutionary development, man reflects preconceived ideas when parading various fossil evidences. But his evidence is not strong enough for us to discard our Biblical framework. If we reevaluate the findings with an open mind and look at the mistakes and problems, we will find that the Bible gives us a very good perspective from which to examine the claims of anthropology.

As far the origin of races is concerned there really is no such thing. We are all one race, the human race, descendants of Noah and his sons -- Ham, Shem, and Japeth. Man is material, intellectual and spiritual, and he must keep these three aspects of his life in balance to be effective. As man rejects God, pursuing goals for his own wants and pleasures, he encounters the problems of today. If man is going to learn anything about his origin, he is not going to find out much by looking downward and trying to determine where he came from. He will not discern the true meaning of his origin until he bows humbly on his knees and looks to God. He will then not only understand his origin, but also his destiny. God created man and provided him with a perfect environment, a perfect climate. God even provided man with food for nourishment.

Back To Genesis

 Continuing with verses 28-30 we read, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God Said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you is shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given green herb for meat: and it was so." He instructed both animal and man to eat the vegetation He created. "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." (Genesis 1:31)

In this opening chapter of the Bible we have a statement, in summary form, yet accurate, of what God did in the beginning. It is a framework which explains the known data. It explains the creation of the heavens, the earth, the universe, the solar system, it explains the existence of matter, explains the origin of the space-mass-time universe. It explains why life reproduces after its own kind. It is consistent with the valid laws of science. All we have to do is postulate that there is a God and this God has the power to do what He says He did. We then have an adequate explanation of the beginning.

What About Satan?

 When did Satan fall? Some teach that the fall of Satan caused the earth to become empty and vain, to become evil, and that chaos resulted. Is this true? Suppose Satan did fall between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and evil was present on the earth. How then does God say in Genesis 1:31 that He saw everything that was made, His beautiful heavens and earth, the garden of Eden, man and all was very good if evil and sin were present? This is inconsistent.

In order to determine something about Satan and when he fell it is necessary to ask who Satan is. He is the Prince of the power of the air, the anointed cherub that covereth, he is evidently a very high and powerful angel. As an angel, he was a created being, created by God. We are told in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 that not only was he the anointed cherub that covereth but he was perfect in the day he was created until iniquity was found in him. His sin was the sin of desiring to be as God, as the most high. But he was a created being and as such was subordinate to the Creator. When was Satan created? Notice chapter 2, verse 1, "Thus the heavens and the earth we finished, and all the host of them." Throughout the Bible the expression "Host of heaven" refers to angels: "the host of heaven worshippeth thee." (Neh. 9:6) The heavenly host sang at Christ’s birth. When were angels created? During the first six days. Psalm 104 when taken as a literal song of creation places angels in the context of day 2. Exodus 20:11 says, "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is..." Where does Satan abide? In heaven, on earth, or in the sea. He has to be in one of those three spheres because those are the only three there are. Since in six days the Lord made heaven, the earth and sea and everything in them sometime in those six days He made Satan. God says in Genesis 1:31 that He "...saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." If God saw everything He had made, He saw Satan. And He says this creation was very good and this would include Satan. So Satan could not have fallen before Genesis 1:31.

As God created all things in six days by His power, He has demonstrated His right to rule and control that which He has made. As He created, He has the right to step in and judge that which He made in the beginning.

As Satan tempted man in Genesis 3 and as man yielded to that temptation plunging the entire human race into sin, we again see the necessity of the Creator stepping in to solve the new problem caused by Adam’s disobedience. As God created, he could and did send His Son to shed His blood as a provision or substitute for man’s sin. Because God created man, He has the right and the power to save man. Those who accept the sacrificial death of Christ and believe in His glorious resurrection will be spared judgment; those who reject that precious sacrifice made freely by the Son of God will be condemned.

As Satan defied God and tempted man in the beginning, he continues to defy God and tempt man even now. As he deceived Eve, causing her to partake of the forbidden fruit, he is and will continue to deceive mankind until the world ends.

God in the beginning created all things and we can see and know His power. God in the beginning created Satan, the angel that fell and we can expect that one day Satan will account for his deceitful dealings with man and his open rebellion against God. We expect God to ultimately judge His created beings and hold responsible for their deeds.

When that judgment day comes, "the heavens and the earth will pass away and all the works that are contained therein will be dissolved." (II Peter 3:10-12) All present things will come to an end and every creature, both man and angel who has rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, will be judged. That’s the way it was and that’s the way it will be.