Jesus Christ Creator

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Jesus Christ Creator
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Creation - Why?

2 The Beginning - When?

3 Man - How?

4 The Flood - Where?

5 The Creator - Who?

Conclusion

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Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the help of my friend and colleague, Dr. Robert Kofahl, who reviewed this manuscript for technical accuracy, and Dr. W. J. DeSaegher, who reviewed the entire manuscript, contributing helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank the men of the Creation Research Society whose firm stand on the Word of God has strengthened my faith and made this book possible.

Kelly L. Segraves, M.A., D.R.E.
Director, Creation-Science Research Center

Introduction

On September 14, 1972, the following letter written by Wernher von Braun was read to the California State Board of Education by Dr. John Ford.

    Dear Mr. Grose:

    In response to your inquiry about my personal views concerning the "Case for DESIGN" as a viable scientific theory for the origin of the universe, life and man, I am pleased to make the following observations.

    For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. In the world around us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design. We can see the will of the species to live and propagate. And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower. The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based.

    While the admission of a design for the universe ultimately raises the question of a Designer (a subject outside of science), the scientific method does not allow us to exclude data which lead to the conclusion that the universe, life and man are based on design. To be forced to believe only one conclusion - that everything in the universe happened by chance - would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?

    Some people say that science has been unable to prove the existence of a Designer. They admit that many of the miracles in the world around us are hard to understand, and they do not deny that the universe, as modern science sees it, is indeed a far more wondrous thing than the creation medieval man could perceive. But they still maintain that since science has provided us with so many answers, the day will soon arrive when we will be able to understand even the creation of the fundamental laws of nature with a Divine Intent. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But, must we really light a candle to see the sun?

    Many men who are intelligent and of good faith say they cannot visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we us it to illuminate our cities, guide our airliners through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him? I am afraid that, although they really do not understand the electron either, they are ready to accept it because they managed to produce a rather clumsy mechanical model of it borrowed from rather limited experience in other fields, but they would not know how to begin building a model of God.

    I have discussed the aspect of a Designer at some length because it might be that the primary resistance to acknowledging the "Case for DESIGN" as a viable scientific alternative to the current "Case for CHANCE" lies in the inconceivability, in some scientists' minds, of a Designer. The inconceivability of some ultimate issue (which will always lie outside scientific resolution) should not be allowed to rule out any theory that explains the interrelationship of observed data and is useful for prediction.

    We in NASA were often asked what the real reason was for the amazing string of successes we had with our Apollo flights to the Moon. I think the only honest answer we could give was that we tried to never overlook anything. It is in that same sense of scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

    With kindest regards.

    Sincerely,

    (signed) Wernher von Braun

* * * * *

For many years now, we have been bombarded with an onslaught of information which is geared to gain our acceptance of evolution as fact. Television programs, magazine articles, and even school textbooks openly present the evolutionary hypothesis as the only explanation available. In most cases evolution is presented as fact. It is not. Many evidences clearly invalidate the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, these evidences are often passed over and sometimes the information is suppressed, seldom reaching the public.

Many scientists have become disenchanted with the evolutionary hypothesis and are seeking a better explanation of the scientific facts which are available to us. The Creation Research Society is associated with nearly 450 scientists (all with advanced degrees) who have noted the inadequacies of the evolutionary theory and are researching an alternative position to the evolutionary premise. This alternative is found in a dynamic and powerful Creator who created all things and set the laws of nature in motion in the beginning.

Perhaps you feel that such men would be biased in their rejection of the evolutionary explanations of origins, but again this is not the case. Having researched both sides of the question, these men feel that creation is a more adequate explanation of the observable scientific phenomena. In fact, many of them were evolutionists at one time and have become creationists after learning about the shaky foundation upon which evolution is based.

It is interesting to note that a few honest appraisals come from evolutionary scientists themselves. One such individual, Dr. G. A. Kerkut of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, University of Southampton, has openly admitted some of the unverifiable assumptions of the evolutionary theory. In his book Implications of Evolution, Dr. Kerkut makes the following statements concerning the theory of evolution:

There are seven basic assumptions that are often not mentioned during discussions of evolution. Many evolutionists ignore the first six assumptions and only consider the seventh. These are as follows:

    1. The first assumption is that non-living things gave rise to living material, i.e. spontaneous generation occurred.

    2. The second assumption is that spontaneous generation occurred only once.

The other assumptions all follow from the second one

    3. The third assumption is that viruses, bacteria, plants and animals are all interrelated.

    4. The fourth assumption is that the protozoa gave rise to the metazoa.

    5. The fifth assumption is that the various invertebrate phyla are interrelated.

    6. The sixth assumption is that the invertebrates gave rise to the vertebrates.

    7. The seventh assumption is that within the vertebrates the fish gave rise to the amphibia, the amphibia to the reptiles, and the reptiles to the birds and mammals. Sometimes this is expressed in other words, i.e. that the modern amphibia and reptiles had a common ancestral stock , and so on.

For the initial purposes of this discussion on evolution I shall consider that the supporters of the theory of evolution hold that all these assumptions form the "General Theory of Evolution."

The first point that I should make is that these seven assumptions by their nature are not capable of experimental verification. They assume that a certain series of events has occurred in the past. Thus though it may be possible to mimic some of these events under present-day conditions, this does not mean that these events must therefore have taken place in the past. All that it shows is that it is possible for such a change to take place. Thus to change a present-day reptile into a mammal, though of great interest, would not show the way in which the mammals did arise. Unfortunately we cannot bring about even this change; instead we have to depend upon limited circumstantial evidence for our assumptions.

After a thorough discussion of each of these basic assumptions, showing them to be just that - assumptions - this statement is his closing remark: ". . . there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the 'General Theory of Evolution' and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis."

Please note that a hypothesis is not a fact. For this reason we must question the concept of evolution and consider an alternative - one that is based upon the Word of God. To accomplish this, it is necessary to examine the Biblical record in order to determine what God says He did and to establish the identity of the Creator.

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1 Creation - Why?

Is a serious study of creation and a careful examination of the Genesis record essential to our Christian faith? Many people tell us that the Christian's responsibility is simply to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. They tell us that the Christian should just try to glorify Him and not become overly concerned with doctrine and certain difficult areas of the Bible. After all, we really don't possess a revelation that tells us how everything came into existence, but one which gives us spiritual guidelines and clarifies our responsibility to proclaim Jesus Christ. With that in mind, they say, why be concerned with creation? Why study creation at all?

An approach to Genesis from such a perspective would seem to lessen the significance of Biblical creation. In addition, Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, Hugo Devries and his idea of mutation, and other events of the last hundred years, such as the Scopes Trial, have suggested that it is unscientific to believe the Biblical account. Thus many scientists have accepted only the theory of evolution. Finally, certain theologians of our day have yielded to the statements made by these scientists and inform us that the book of Genesis does not give a clear notion as to how God created the heavens and the earth, that it does not tell us when He created them, and that Genesis is not an account we can accept literally. Basically, the first eleven chapters of Genesis impart only suggestion or a "figurative rendition" of a beginning. We are told we cannot receive these chapters as literal truth because, after all, we "know" that the world evolved. Thus science classrooms around the country propagate the theory of evolution. Genesis is deemed the great myth of our time; anyone who believes it must be considered foolish.

What can we do about our dilemma? What defense can be established? Let us address ourselves first of all to the theologian who has thrown out the first eleven chapters of Genesis on the basis that it is non-scientific and cannot be accepted literally. Suppose we grant him that premise for a moment. We will reject the passage in question, labeling it myth and allegory. We will disclaim any statement in the passage regarding science, for we know that evolution is a valid law of science. On the basis of such a premise, however, and in an attempt to be consistent, we must necessarily throw out any references to these eleven chapter that appear in the rest of the Bible. Why? If the first eleven chapters are untrue, then a reference by any other writer to the first eleven chapters would only serve to perpetuate falsehoods.

Turn first to Exodus 20:8-11:

    Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath day 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.

If we eliminate the first eleven chapters of Genesis, then we must throw out this reference to those eleven chapters, for here in the eleventh verse we read, "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." Such a statement is foolishness if evolution is true. Note, however, that this little verse appears in the midst of the Ten Commandments - and is the basis for one of the commandments. In effect God is saying, as I, God, created the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh, so shall you, man, work six days and rest on the seventh. Remember the seventh day; keep it holy and worship Me. James tells us that if we are guilty of breaking one of the commandments, we are guilty of breaking them all. If we deny the accuracy of verse eleven, we deny a premise upon which one of the Ten Commandments is based. And if Moses is untrustworthy here, we may well doubt is credibility elsewhere.

To dispute the correctness of verse eleven is to conceive that God, who revealed to Moses the writing on stone tablets, revealed something which contained a lie, which is contrary to His nature. If He wrote there with His own hand that He created everything in six days and we have proven scientifically that He could not do it. Then God has lied to us from the tablets of the Law. In addition, an inaccurate Mosaic account, here and throughout the Pentateuch, would bring into disrepute other verses in the Old Testament that deal with the Law, because the entire law is focused upon the Ten Commandments. If the Ten Commandments are wrong, the Law is void.

Many Old Testament writers refer to God's work of creation in terms of the Genesis account. We read in Ecclesiastes 7:29, "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright . . ." The Psalmist says, "For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:9); creation of the heavens was "the work of thy [God's] fingers" (Psalm 8:3). In Proverbs and in most of the prophets appear numerous references to God's having created. God's own testimony to the prophet Isaiah clearly specifies the consequences of setting aside the first eleven chapters of Genesis.

    Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his redeemer the Lord of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it. And set it in order for me. Since I appointed the ancient people? And the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them. Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? Ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any.

    Isaiah 44:6-8

After castigating man's idolatrous worship, He continues,

    Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

    Isaiah 44:24

In the following chapter we read,

    I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me . . . I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things . . . I have made the earth, and created man upon it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. Hi have raised him up in righteousness, I will direct all his ways. He shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price, nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts . . . For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens. God Himself that formed the earth and made it, 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.

    Isaiah 45:5,7,12,13,18

Disregarding the authenticity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis on the basis that God did not create the heavens and earth requires that we reject the testimony of Isaiah - the testimony of God Himself - and declare that God is telling us a lie.

Now let us turn to the New Testament, still upholding the premise that evolution, as a valid law of science, supplants the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In Matthew 19:3-5 the Pharisees came to Jesus, "tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" He replied, "Have you not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female. And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be on flesh?" In this passage verse 4 is taken from chapter 1 of Genesis, verse 5 from chapter 2. If evolution is true - if all things came about by natural causes, the results of such processes as natural selection and mutations, and uniformitarianism - we cannot accept the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, who placed His credence on the testimony of Genesis 1 and 2. Either Jesus did not know that the world evolved, He was deceived by some foolish idea that it was created, or He deliberately deceived us because the people of His day could not understand evolution and thus He patterned His words after ideas that would be acceptable in His day. None of these three choices helps the Bible very much. If we cannot accept His teaching concerning spiritual things, such as heaven and a life hereafter?

If the testimony of Matthew is not credible, we must doubt the gospel of Mark, which concurs with Matthew. The third gospel writer, Luke, in the book of Acts (chapter 17) recounts the experience of the Apostle Paul in Athens. Preaching on Mars Hill, Paul speaks of "the unknown God." He introduces this particular God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the one who "giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." Not only in the book of Acts and the gospel of Luke, but also in the writings of John we find reference to the creation account. In fact, the gospel of John begins, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." He says of this individual who was in the beginning with God, "All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made." Must we throw out the testimony of John because he begins his book with a faulty premise, the idea of creation? If this were so, we would have to discard the epistles of John and even Revelation. In Revelation 14:7 the angel in he midst of the tribulation period cries out one message, "Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the foundations of waters." Apparently this angel was not informed that everything evolved.

In the writings of the apostle Paul, beginning in Romans 1, he speaks more than once of creation. "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20). Paul is telling us here that if we are willing to accept the fact of creation and examine things from this point of view, the invisible attributes of God are evidenced by the creation.

If Paul is mistaken in Romans, we may have difficulty accepting his statements in other epistles, but let us focus upon some of his other declarations. In Colossians he affirms, "For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist" (Colossians 1:16,17). The entire passage refers to Jesus Christ. If the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 is not to be accepted as literal fact, we invalidate this presentation of Jesus Christ as Creator and deny a portion of His nature. We would also have to dismiss the testimony of Paul in I Corinthians 15:39, "All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds." Here Paul delineates four distinct kinds of flesh, each created separately. Every seed has its own body. If we sow barley, we will reap barley. One never plants wheat and reaps pomegranates. We always reap what we sow because things only reproduce after their kind, which is in accord with Genesis and the law of biogenesis.

Paul also tells us in I Corinthians 11 that

    . . . a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. (Verses 7-11)

He stresses that the first man was created in the image of God, but the first woman was taken from the side of Adam, created for the man. The first man did not come from a woman. That is impossible if evolution were true, for in evolution the first man would have had to be born of some female ancestor.

The author of Hebrews begins, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds" (Hebrews 1:1-2). If the worlds were not made, but evolved, the testimony of this book would become untrustworthy. Later in the book we likewise read, "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3). This text, incidentally, affords an interesting description of the atom, of which all things consist.

The testimonies of James and Peter coincide with that of Paul. We find in James 1:18, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." God does not have any creatures if He did not create anything. We might add, of course, that if everything evolved, there is no need for a God. The apostle Peter is consistent in confirming the fact of creation. "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the father fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." Peter comments, "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; Whereby the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished" (II Peter 3:3-6). He is citing here the fact of creation and the fact of the Flood. Note also that he is basing the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ upon these two events - the creation and the Flood. According to Peter, if we cannot verify the creation and the Flood, we have no way of verifying the second coming of Christ. Peter insists that any man who disbelieves those two accounts disbelieves the coming again and is willingly ignorant of the facts. If evolution is true, of course, Peter is willingly ignorant.

We have now disposed of all but one book of the New Testament. However, even the book of Jude presents a few problems, for it mentions Adam and angels, both of whom were created.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

If evolution is true, we do not have a New Testament to preach. Jesus Christ is a martyr and a liar, a man who died in vain. If everything evolved, then you are the result of natural processes and possess no sin nature, but are simply the consequence of your animal ancestry. As Freud says, we must work hard to get rid of the beast in man. If evolution is fact, we have no Christian ethic, no morals, no future life. If we throw out the first eleven chapters of Genesis, the Word of God is nothing more than a book. In fact, there would be no Word of God.

To be logical and reasonable, then, since I am not willing to repudiate the opening chapters of Genesis, and because I have personally met the One who wrote them - Jesus Christ, who possesses supreme power and ultimate authority - I must accept what the Scriptures have to say. I will accept literally the first eleven chapters of Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days. I will affirm that creation took place rather recently, that man fell into sin while living in Eden, that there was a worldwide Flood.

Why is creation important? Because without creation there is nothing else. If there is no Creator, then there is no Saviour either. When someone says, "Present the message of Jesus Christ," I heartily concur. But we must present the creative message of Jesus Christ because of who He claimed to be. Picture in your mind the person of Jesus Christ. Do you envision a man with a beard, perhaps rough and rugged, walking upon the earth? Do you see a man talking to children, at the well speaking to the woman, walking on the water, hanging upon a cross? If so, your picture is of Jesus Christ incarnate, in fashion like a man, performing an earthly ministry among men.

The apostle Paul, however, tells who Jesus really is, proclaiming that "we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins." He is "the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." By Jesus Christ "were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him" (Colossians 1:14-16). Notice the all encompassing creative power of Christ. Everything that exists is either in heaven or in earth, visible or invisible. His power comprehends thrones and dominions, principalities (angels) and powers. All of these things were created by Him and for Him, and by Him all things consist. In other words, He is the power which holds the entire universe together. Thus creation is important because of its relationship to the One who created.

We have a tendency at times to be excessively concerned with what man has to say. When some professor tells us that evolution is a proven fact, or when we take the Bible off its inspired plane and attempt to make it coincide with man's theories, we begin to have problems. The Bible instructs us to be "ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you" (I Peter 3:15). This certainly includes the realm of scientific knowledge.

A fable is told of a small monkey who lived in the wilds of the jungle. He began to wonder why he and his friends did not go down to the river in the cool of the evening. After all, they went down after lunch in the warmth of the day to do a little skinny dipping. It would be equally delightful to go for a moonlight swim. He asked some of the other monkeys, but no one really seemed to know. Finally he came to his uncle, the wisest of all the monkeys in the clan. "Uncle, why don't we go down to the river in the cool of the evening?"

His uncle replied, "We don't go down there because the crocodiles come out. Crocodiles like to eat small monkeys."

That bothered the small monkey a little bit, but he had never seen a crocodile. His friends likewise had never seen a crocodile. So he queried, "Uncle, have you ever seen a crocodile? How do you know crocodiles exist?"

"This information has been passed down to us from generation to generation. It is a well-known fact. If we could write, it would probably be recorded in the Dead Monkey Scrolls someplace."

"What does a crocodile look like?"

"It is reported that crocodiles are long, thin animals with bumps on their bodies. They float down the river like logs. They have two beady eyes, sharp teeth, terrible breath - and they enjoy eating monkeys for dinner."

That was rather frightening to small monkey, but he continues his questioning of other monkeys and could not find anyone who had ever seen a crocodile. Ultimately, he was convinced that crocodiles simply did not exist, so he set out one evening to prove his new-found wisdom. It was a beautiful evening, the perfect time to get rid of that old wives' tale and superstition passed on by monkeys' uncles. So ecstatic was he in his new-found wisdom that he did not even notice a log floating down the river. He wasn't a bit perturbed when he heard a rustling in the brush behind him, when he felt hot breath down his back. Small monkey soon became crocodile's dinner. The monkey had said that he refused to believe in crocodiles, but the old crocodile just chuckled, "O foolish monkey, to have said in your heart, there are no crocodiles."

Man today considers it foolish to believe in God. He will ridicule you and call you a fool. But God replies, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). Man today with his new-found wisdom worships the creature, paying homage to his own knowledge and intellect. God warns, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" (Romans 1:22). Peter says that the man who denies creation, the Flood, and the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ is willfully ignorant of the facts. Personally, I would rather be called a fool by man because I believed in the wisdom of God than to be called a fool by God because I heeded the vain babblings and teachings of man. Just because man denies God and His law does not make God's law null and void. I can deny the law of gravity all day, but the moment I step off a thirty story building, I fall in one direction. I can deny it all the way down, but my denial does not mean that I am not bound by its restraints. Man today, in denying God and His law, is still bound by the restraints of God's law.

[Soldier4Christ]

2 The Beginning - When?

According to the opening chapter of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." When exactly was "the beginning"? We are frequently told that everything began some four and a half billion years ago. Some books suggest six billion years, and a few articles would even urge a span of 30 billion years. There seems to be a contradiction between the statements of Genesis and the premises of people who accept the evolutionary hypothesis. How does one blend four and a half billion evolutionary years with 6000 years (as determined from the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 and by Bishop Ussher)?

Some scholars have attempted to merge Biblical with evolutionary thinking, accounting for differences by making the days of creation long periods of time or by placing a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. In this chapter we will discuss these two theories as well as analyzing theories concerning the age of the earth itself.

THE DAY-AGE THEORY

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The nature of "the beginning" is clarified to an extent in Genesis 1:31, "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." Chapter 2:1-2 continues, "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." God completed His work on the seventh day. Exodus 20:11 concurs with the Genesis account: "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day." God seems to have ended His creative activity on the seventh day, which would place the beginning of His creative acts exactly six days before their completion.

If the beginning was six days before the completion, we must next ask, How long was "the day"? God defines the Hebrew word for day the first time He uses it. According to Genesis 1:5, "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." The light period of time is clearly labeled "day," the dark period designated "night." In addition, God uses two phrases which indicate the length of a day. "And the evening and the morning were the first day." Every time the Hebrew words for evening and morning are used in the Old Testament, they refer to a literal day. The Hebrew concept of "day" begins in the evening, continues through the night, and terminates the following afternoon. Thus "evening and morning" are expressions used to define a literal day.

Every time the Hebrew word yom (singular) is used in the Old Testament with a numerical adjective - first day, fifth day, tenth day, 100th day - it refers to a literal solar day. Likewise, each time yamim (plural) is used, literal days must be specified. Compare, for instance, the double usage of yamim in Exodus 20, the passage which contains the Ten Commandments. In verses 8-10, obviously speaking of a literal seven-day week, God enjoins us to work only six days (yamim), retaining the Sabbath as a day of rest. Why should man rest one day in seven? Because, according to verse 11, which relates back to the Genesis account of creation, God created everything in six days (yamim) and rested on the seventh.

A consistent interpretation of Scripture must find that "day" or "days" when used in a clearly literal context, as in Exodus 20:9, will likewise require actual solar days in Genesis 1 or Exodus 20:11, referring to days of creation. No exception may be allowed.

If one attempts to extend the days of creation into long periods of time, strange things happen. For instance, an effort to correlate the days of creation with the evolutionary geologic column produces at least twenty-one major discrepancies. According to the evolutionists, several things are wrong with the Biblical account. For one thing, plant life, the first life to appear in Genesis, comes rather late in evolutionary development. There are also some problems with differences between fish and fowl. In Genesis fowl are created on the same day as fish. When God created life. He started with whales, sea creatures, and fowl (Genesis 1:21). But according to evolution, fish gave rise to reptiles, which developed into mammals and birds. Again, the sun, moon and stars in the Genesis account were made on the fourth day, whereas these are the evolutionary essentials for bringing life into being. If life were to come about by microbiology, by some simple chemicals coming together to form amino acids, later becoming more complex protein molecules and ultimately the first cell, then radiant energy or sunlight would be needed. Finally, if one tries to stretch creation days into long periods of time. Plant life, created on the third day, would have to live without the light of the sun for however long your day was - 1000 years, one million years - because the light from the sun did not reach here until it was created on the fourth day. The third day brought forth plants, but insects which are necessary for the pollinization of many flowering plants are not created until the sixth day.

With reference again to consistent Biblical interpretation, if one insists that days are long periods of time in Genesis, he will have to say that they are long periods of time in other places of Scripture, such as Jonah's three days in the whale or Nehemiah's three days spent in the city. How long is a day? God says He began His creative activity six days before He completed it. The Bible is consistent, and therefore these days must be literal days.

THE GAP THEORY

In the light of the weaknesses found within the day-age theory, some people have invented another theory called the gap theory. The gap theory, or ruin and reconstruction theory, proposes that God originally created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1. There was then a judgment and a cataclysm, some kind of catastrophic event by which the earth was judged and became "without form and void," as noted in verse 2. Proponents suggest that there is good evidence for this in the text, because "darkness was upon the face of the deep," and darkness is evidence of sin. Then "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." According to the gap theory, the word for "moved," which connotes brooding, indicates that God was brooding over this evil chaos, thus providing additional evidence for a gap and a judgment. The basic tenet that nothing chaotic comes from the hand of God demands a context of judgment upon sin between verses 1 and 2.

With Genesis 1:2 viewed as evidence for some catastrophic event, many people have tried to place all the geologic ages between the opening verses of Genesis and thus provide adequate room for evolution. They project that God created an original heaven and earth which He judged. He then recreated some of the animals, so a six-day creation could still be maintained.

First, let us consider the arguments presented in favor of this theory. The Bible says. "And the earth was without form, and void" (Genesis 1:2). The word for "was" in Hebrew is the verb hayah, the basic Hebrew word for being. It is used 1522 times in the Pentateuch alone. Fifteen hundred times it is translated by its simple usage "was," but twenty-two times it is used with the idea of "became." Each time it is translated "became," the context denotes a change taking place: Lot left the city with his wife, she was walking with him, she was a woman, she turned and "became" a pillar of salt. Such a change occurs in all of the instances translating this word "became." However, one cannot supply this translation in Genesis 1, which demands the simple usage of the word "was."

The proponents of the gap theory say that the words "without form and void" indicate some chaotic condition as a result of judgment. They point to verses in Jeremiah 4:23-26 and Isaiah 24:1, where the same words are used to refer to some type of catastrophic event. But both of those instances refer to a time when people living in an area experienced a judgment, a destruction, because of which the whole territory was laid waste and desolate to the extent that it became unpopulated. With that in mind, note Isaiah 45:18, "For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; 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 description there are no people. It is the description of an earth which is incomplete and unfinished. The word "vain" here is the same word which is translated "void" in Genesis 1:2. The earth was empty and void of life or empty and vain. God said He created it not in vain, but to be finished and inhabited by people. In this particular verse (Isaiah 45:18) the earth is not complete, so there can be no reference to any destruction and judgment, for in order to have a judgment there would have to be inhabitants to judge.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

"And darkness was upon the face of the deep."  Those who insist that darkness is evidence of sin conclude that verse 2 gives evidence of sin on the earth which resulted in cataclysm and judgment. True, darkness sometimes gives the impression of evil, but notice what God does with the darkness. He says, "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). If darkness is evidence of evil in verse 2, then it is also evidence of evil in verse 5. But the latter darkness He calls night. Must night, then, be considered evil? To the contrary, God, who sets up a system of light and darkness, says the whole system is "very good"  (Genesis 1:31). The darkness of verse 2, then, simply means the absence of light. God solves that problem by creating light.

The final statement of verse 2 is quite direct and literal. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" merely signifies that the Spirit of God was present and that water existed.

To argue for a gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2 and to place the geologic ages there is to formulate some very serious difficulties. If a judgment had been placed upon these earliest life forms, they would be buried in the earth, producing some kind of fossil record. This fossil record is found in the various geological strata and is really a record of the death, decay and destruction of plants and animals on the earth, laid in sedimentary strata by some kind of water action. Philosophically, if we try to correlate this with the Genesis account of chapter 1, then we are saying that death is the element to bring new forms of life upon the earth. This assumes that man is really the result of death over a vast period of time. Certain types of animals unfit to survive lost their ecological niche and died out; some new form of life entered, and ultimately man came upon the earth.

In opposition to this argument, Genesis 1-3 proclaims that man was created perfect by God. Because of man's disobedience to God, sin and death entered into this world for the first time. The Bible states that death came as a result of man's disobedience to God's law, whereas, according to evolution, the geologic record says that man is the result of death, having evolved from earlier animal ancestors that are now extinct.

What will we find, then, if we place the record of the geologic column into a gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2? We will discover buried in all the strata throughout the earth - every square foot of ground upon which Adam walked in the Garden of Eden - evidence of the destruction of animals and plants. But God created this garden in which (according to the gap theory) every rock contained evidence of death and destruction of animals in the past, and He said of this garden that it was "very good." In addition Romans 5:12 tells us that by Adam's disobedience death entered into this world for the first time. A gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2, into which the fossil record is placed, demands that Adam find death evidenced in every rock he looks at. How, then, can one honestly say that by Adam sin and death entered into the world for the first time? If we destroy that premise, we basically destroy the doctrine of sin and ultimately the basis for salvation, which is established upon the premise that Adam, a perfectly created individual, fell into sin, and his disobedience brought death into this world for the first time. On that basis Jesus Christ came to save that which He created.

Proponents of the gap theory suggest that the sun, moon and stars were created in verse 1 but that God did not make them appear until Genesis 1:16, which introduces two different lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night. They claim that the word "made" (verse 16) does not mean that God directly created them on that day, but that He unveiled them - He uncovered the cloud or vapor that kept them from being seen. This explanation is given in the Scofield Bible, whose notes contend that the verb asah indicates that God made the sun, moon and stars to appear. If this is true, and God simply remade them or made them to appear, we must ask what is meant by the verb asah in Genesis 1:26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image." Does this mean "Let us make man to appear"? Does it suggest that God uncovered man from the dust, perhaps taking one of the destroyed fossil men and remaking him? Was man merely unveiled or allowed to appear? To be consistent, one would have to accept such a description.

God seems to use two words asah and bara, interchangeably, for in Genesis 5:1 He says, "In the day that God created [bara] man, in the likeness of God made [asah] he him." And the Lord God says He made (asah) the earth and the heaven, whereas in Genesis 1:1 God created (bara) the earth and heaven. Genesis 2:4 tells us, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created [bara] in the day that the Lord God made [asah] the earth and the heavens." In Exodus 20:11, "For in six days the Lord made [asah] heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." We must conclude, therefore, that asah is not to be translated "made to appear," but simply "made" or "created."

A number of serious theological questions arise if we accept the thesis that God remade the sun, moon and stars. Does that mean that He also remade man? And if He made man over, then was man pre-existent before Adam? If so, this pre-existent mortal was totally destroyed and God did not save a remnant; in other words, His first creation was a total failure. But can God fail? If so, must we be fearful that He is failing now? And what about the souls of the men who were eliminated in this gap judgment before verse 2? Were they living souls condemned to hell? We may forego such questions if we remember the Bible's clear statement that Adam was created as the first man. In fact, because the first Adam, though created perfect, fell, Christ, the second Adam, came to save.

Since many gap theorists place most of the fossil record in the gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2, serious problems arise for them concerning the Flood. If any evidence of this gap judgment survived today in fossil remains of animals and plants buried by a cataclysm after Genesis 1:1, one could not affirm the occurrence of the worldwide Flood in Genesis 6,7 & 8. This catastrophe would probably erase most of the evidence of any previous cataclysm and rearrange the fossils so that one could not separate the fossils and determine which were from the gap judgment and which were from the Flood judgment without limiting the effects of the Flood. In light of this, it seems contradictory to place the fossil record in the gap and thereby deny another portion of Scripture, namely the universal Flood.

The gap theory requires cataclysmic judgment upon sin in order to produce an earth "without form, and void" (Genesis 1:2). Heretofore we have considered judgment upon pre-Adamic man; however the gap theory at times assigns the cause to the fall of Satan. That is, Satan was ejected from heaven and was cast to the earth, supposedly causing judgment upon it. We read a description of this fall in Ezekiel 28, beginning with verse 12, and in Isaiah 14, beginning with verse 12. God says that Lucifer was a created being, the "anointed cherub that covereth" (Ezekiel 28:14). He was perfect from the day of his creation until the day that iniquity was found in him. Satan at one point decided that he himself would like to be the recipient of worship. He decided in his heart that he was as high as God: "I will be like the most High" (Isaiah 14:14). He worshipped himself rather than God and placed himself before the Word of God. Satan was created perfect, but he fell.



cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

The Biblical statement concerning Satan's fall is quite clear, but keeping in mind the gap theory's contention, let us turn to Genesis 2:1. "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." The "host of heaven" refers to two things in Scripture: stars and angels (cf. Nehemiah 9:6, Revelation 12:4). Throughout the Psalms, Job, and several other books the "host of heaven" is repeatedly referred to as angels. In addition, the Bible tells us that angels rejoiced at the creation, but it does not say which particular stage of the creation. In Genesis 2:1 God finished the heavens and the earth and all the host of them, which would include the angels' creation within that six day event. Exodus 20:11 concurs, explaining that God "made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is" - including angels - in six days. Affirming, then, that angels (including Lucifer) were part of the six-day creative process, we find God saying in Genesis 1:31 that He saw "everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." If God saw everything that He had made, He saw Satan. But if we accept this aspect of the gap theory, we would have to say that god beheld all that He had made, and, behold, every thing was very good - except Satan. In terms of the conclusion to this Genesis chapter, any evidence of sin on the earth or in heaven would transform God into a liar. And He does not say His creation is just good, but "very good." In other words, Satan could not have fallen before the end of the sixth day.

Scripture itself does not seem to validate the gap theory's argument that the fall of Satan and his followers, who were "cast . . . to the earth" (Revelation 12:4), fashioned an earth of darkness, without form and void. In fact, a full reading of Revelation 12 (cf. verse 9) speaks again of Satan being "cast out into the earth," but this is yet a future event. Since his fall Satan has argued with God over the tempting of Job and debated with Michael over the body of Moses, and at present he has access to the heavens as the accuser of the brethren to Jesus Christ, the Christian's advocate with the Father. Scripture fails to support any view that Satan's fall caused a cataclysm, whether past or future.

A CONSISTENT READING OF GENESIS 1

If we interpret Genesis 1 in the light of what is actually there, we will find a very different picture than what has been proposed. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." God created first of all an expanse and an earth - the word "heaven" means expanse. We seem to think of heaven as sun, moon and stars, but according to Genesis 1:14-17 the stars are hung in the heaven, or something we call space. Evidently before God began His creative activity, before Genesis 1, there was no such thing as space. God created space, mass and time to declare His power and Godhead.

In the beginning, then, God created this great expanse and the earth. In verse 2 He describes what the earth is like - "without form, and void." In other words, it is empty and vain, unfinished, void of life, as described in Isaiah 45:18. "Darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." According to this verse there is one body of water; earth or land exists, but a careful reading of the description in Genesis 1 indicates that land is completely covered by water. We may envision a rotating body of water shrouded in darkness in a vast expanse.

God then created light and divided it from the darkness. On Day 2 God divided the water from above the firmament and from under the firmament, establishing a unique atmosphere for the earth. On Day 3 God called the dry land out of the water. He let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and the dry land appeared. God called the dry land earth; the gathering together of the water he called seas. He now said, "Let the earth [the dry land area] bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and fruit trees." On Day 4 God divided His singular light source to create a sun and moon, now distributing that light source, forming stars and star groups as He created the heavens.

Then on Day 5 God created the fish of the sea and fowl that fly above the earth. On Day 6 He created cattle and creeping things. Also on the sixth day He created man, and after seeing that man was not complete, He created woman. At this point, when God finished all His creative activity, He pronounced it "very good."

Those who argue for a gap theory say that Genesis 1:28, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," is evidence that people must have inhabited the earth prior to Genesis 1:26, 27. However, the word "replenish" in Hebrew means "fill" or "refill." Even the English usage of "replenish" may indicate filling the first time. A proper translation would be "to fill" - simply fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air. This was God's purpose for man.

According to Genesis 2, Adam was created full-grown and intelligent. The day of his creation he was able to walk through the Garden of Eden and name all the animals. In addition, the trees of the Garden were growing and giving fruit, though created only a few days before Adam. As Adam looked into the heavens, he could see the light shining from the stars. By stretching out the heavens (cf. Isaiah 44:24), God created the stars, and the light from the stars was visible on earth, giving the appearance that they had been shining for years, though created only two days before. Because all of God's creation appeared originally in a mature form, showing evidence of age, we can account for much of the discrepancy between the age of the earth given by the Biblical account and the age as given by the evolutionist. Remember, Adam was created as a full-grown adult.

George Gaylord Simpson, a leading evolutionist, admits that if one grants the premise of the appearance of age, he could not disprove that the earth was created one second ago, in 4004 B.C., or four and a half billion years ago. However, the creationists assume that the earth was created with the appearance of age. God says He did just that: He created man full-grown, a universe perfectly functioning. True creation, unlike evolution, does not predicate a gradual development form the simple to the complex. As the Bible clearly illustrates, creation begins only with God's eternal power and brings forth a mature product.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

DETERMINING THE AGE OF THE EARTH

We now come to a major dilemma. If no gap exists between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2, thus denying the insertion of a long period of time, how do we solve the discrepancies concerning the age of the earth? Certainly there is a serious discrepancy between an age of four and a half billion years and an age of 6000 years. To place the problem in a figurative perspective, both evolutionist and creationist are examining a burning candle which is six inches high at the moment and burns at the rate of one inch per hour. The question is asked: how long has the candle been burning? In order to determine this, they need to know the length of the candle when it was lit. For instance, if the candle were originally eleven inches high, burning at the rate of one inch per hour, they can determine that it has been burning for five hours.

Two of the principal dating methods for obtaining the age of the earth are uranium-lead and thorium-lead, based on the half-life of uranium and thorium. These methods are used with rocks that contain uranium and thorium as well as other minerals. In order to explain this method let us assume that we have a rock which is completely uranium. Theory would state that in four and a half billion years, or the half-life of uranium, this rock would be half uranium and half lead - in four and a half billion years half of the uranium would turn into lead. We know the present amount of uranium, we know the present amount of lead, we know the present rate - but how long has this process been going on? Was it created in almost its present condition - half uranium and half lead? The evolutionist assumes that the rock was totally uranium in the beginning and has been decaying for four and a half billion years, with nothing ever changing its decay rate. Moreover, it is assumed that nothing has occurred to greatly affect the uranium and lead content of the rock. All things have remained constant.

Return to the illustration of the candle. Remember, it is six inches and burns at the rate of one inch per hour. One way to determine how long the candle has been burning is to measure the amount of carbon dioxide being expelled from the burning candle. If all of the carbon dioxide in the room were measured and we assumed that it all came from the candle, we could determine how long the candle had been burning.

What problem might we encounter? If someone were breathing in the room, and additional amount of carbon dioxide would be produced. Carbon dioxide, naturally present in the atmosphere, would also be in the room - as well as the carbon dioxide coming from the candle. Therefore, if we assume that all of the carbon dioxide in the room emanated from the candle, an age or length of time for the burning candle is going to be greater than the actual time the candle has been burning. Our dilemma is clear: the amount of carbon dioxide coming from the candle, from breathing and from the atmosphere cannot be separated. Since all carbon dioxide from all three sources is identical, it cannot be traced to its origin.

Lead is found in its natural state in the earth and is also present from the decay of uranium. By looking at lead you could not determine if it were naturally present or the product of the decay process. Unless you can separate the two, you cannot really judge the length of the decay process. Assuming that all of the lead in the earth came as a result of decay, you might come up with an age of four and half billion years for the earth. But let us return to the example of the candle. As the candle burns and decays, it gives off a certain amount of carbon dioxide, but it also emits a secondary by-product - wax drippings. No wax is naturally present in the room where the candle is burning, so we can be quite sure that all of the wax drippings came from the candle. But then we must ask "Did the candle always burn at the same rate?"

If it did burn at the same rate from beginning to end, we could measure the wax drippings and determine very accurately how long the candle has been burning. By comparison, as uranium in rocks decays into lead, it gives off a secondary by-product, helium. At the present rate of formation the total amount of radiogenic helium in the earth today can be accounted for within the last 12,000 years. Efforts to demonstrate that helium can escape the atmosphere seem futile since helium is being added to the atmosphere by the solar wind. This means that it is totally impossible for the earth to be four and a half billion years old on the basis of the uranium-lead and thorium-lead dating systems, for there simply is not enough helium, enough by-product present.

Using the helium method, measuring the other by-product of uranium decay instead of lead, one finds that it gives an earth-age of something like 12,000 years - if one assumes there is no helium to start with. But helium is a basic element, and so its natural presence would move the earth-age date to an even younger age.

There are other ways of looking at the uranium-lead and thorium-lead dating systems. In some rocks natural lead is not present, as evidenced by the absence of lead 204. Yet lead 208 exists in these rocks without the parent element thorium. Now it is impossible to have a daughter element without a parent element, at least if it is a by-product of some decay system. Yet at times we find lead 208 with very little or no thorium. This causes some scientists, such as Dr. Melvin Cook, a Ph.D. from Yale, to examine the system. He was curious about the ratio of nitrogen 14 and nitrogen 15 in the atmosphere which is different from the ratio of nitrogen 14 and nitrogen 15 in certain uranium-thorium minerals containing lead isotopes but not lead 204. Because lead is a very active element in nuclear reactions and would pick up fast neutrons freely, Dr. Cook compiled some calculations on fast neutron capture to indicate that the actual process was as follows: uranium was not decaying into lead, but lead 206 gained a neutron and became lead 207 which in turn gained a neutron and became lead 208. This discovery clearly resolved all the discrepancies between nitrogen 14 and nitrogen 15 ratios. Furthermore, this is the most logical way one can account for lead 208 being found in rocks without thorium, the parent element. According to Dr. Cook's calculations the uranium to lead system would give a zero age for the earth. These calculations show that the hands of this clock have not moved. When we consider the effects of the helium method gives a maximum age of 12,000 years, we can see there is strong evidence that the earth is very young.

Another method of dating, a little more accurate and easier to deal with, is carbon 14, a radioactive substance which possesses a half-life of 5570 years. It is estimated that a certain constant number of carbon 14 atoms are being produced each year in the upper atmosphere. When the total amount of carbon 14 atoms in the earth has built up to the point where the number of carbon 14 atoms decomposing in one year is equal to the number of carbon 14 atoms being produced in the upper atmosphere, then equilibrium will be reached. This process should take only 30,000 years, and since most evolutionists feel that the earth is older than 30,000 years, it is assumed that equilibrium has been reached. Yet it is now admitted by scientists that only enough decomposing carbon 14 atoms can be found to account for the system being two-thirds of the way to equilibrium. This means that the atmosphere is much younger than 30,000 years in age. If we agree only with the known measurements established by Libby and others who invented the method, we find that there is a non-equilibrium model (the rate of formation of carbon 14 in the upper atmosphere is still greater than the amount of decay)which can be used to correct for the assumption that equilibrium has been reached. All carbon 14 dates which have been published in the science journals can be telescoped to within the last 4000 years by this non-equilibrium model, and a maximum age for the earth of 11,500 years is established. At least that is the maximum age for the earth's atmosphere, and it would be hard to conceive of the earth existing without an atmosphere. Carbon 14 certainly has a half-life which is commensurate with a young age for the earth and seems to be a reasonable dating method when it has been properly calibrated.

When we examine what the scientists have to say, rather than taking their word at face value, and compare it with the Bible, we find that there is no need to stretch out the days of creation, no need to formulate a gap between Genesis 1:1 & 1:2. If we are willing to stand behind what the Bible affirms - that God created the heavens and the earth by His power in six literal days, as He says He did - our position can be supported by the actual facts of science. There is no known discrepancy which would disprove Biblical statements. Antithetical proposals are simply the assumptions of men who choose not to believe in God and who are trying to document the development of animals and plants apart from God. They wish to rely on natural processes rather than upon any supernatural force. The evolutionary position is held by faith. How much better to place our faith in a Biblical position of a supernatural God, who has the power and the authority to accomplish what He says He did.

[Soldier4Christ]

3 Man - How?

What we believe concerning man's origin will influence our feelings and actions today and will ultimately influence our belief about the destiny of man. If evolution is true, man is simply the result of his evolutionary ancestry and does not have a fallen nature; instead, his actions are merely the result of his animal ancestry. Freud says we must do what we can to get rid of the beast in man. But if man never fell, if he is simply the carry-over from his animal ancestry, then there really is no need for man to have any system of morals, for he is not a moral being. He is simply the highest animal in the animal kingdom. This philosophy is the basis for some of the problems we have in the world today.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines man as simply the highest of the beasts, the highest form of the animal kingdom. If man is the highest of the animal kingdom, still evolving, there is no more hope for man than for parakeets, penguins or platypuses.

In opposition to evolution, the Bible maintains the salient importance of man, separate and distinct from animals. What we believe and accept concerning the premise of man's origins will ultimately determine all of our actions. If we firmly agree with what God has to say concerning the origin of man, we will live a life more pleasing to Him. The purpose of this treatise is to strengthen that faith in God's Word.

CREATION OF MAN

    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 them. 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 fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

    Genesis 1:26-28

Does God say, let man be one of the fish of the sea, one of the fowl of the air, or one of the cattle of the earth; let him be related to all the animals on the earth? No, He instructs man to have dominion over these creatures. The purpose of God in creating man was that he would be distinct from the animals. Nothing happened to man until God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life - then man became a living soul. God did not do this with the animal kingdom.

    And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

    Genesis 2:7-10, 15-20

Notice something about Adam: God did not create a baby and wait for him to grow up. On the day Adam was created he possessed all of his faculties, reflected intelligence, and was full-grown with all the appearance of age. That tells us something about God's creation. When He created the tree, probably it had growth rings. When He created the mountain, it may have had the appearance of erosion and other indicators of age. Genesis 1:9 says that God caused the waters to gather and the dry land to appear. Some mountain-building probably occurred and possibly some erosion. In any case, the dry land and the mountains would have gained an appearance of age. Adam, created on the sixth day, could see light coming from stars created on the fourth day, though apparently millions of light years away. God created a full-grown, developed universe.

Adam named all the animals, but he did not find anyone who met his specification for a mate. Adam was totally unique. There was no help meet for him. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept:" and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto man" (Genesis 2:21-22). This is a most interesting portion of Scripture and probably one of the most scientific texts in the Bible. Investigation with frogs and other animals has led to some interesting results. Every cell in the body contains the same genetic structure. The nucleus of the skin cell of a frog can be used to replace the nucleus of an egg and eventually cause a tadpole to hatch. The cell, even though a skin cell, has the full template for the entire structure of a frog within it. In other words, every cell in the body has the same template. We do not as yet understand enough about this experiment to transfer the nuclei of skin cells to human eggs.

However, this scientific information suggests something about the method God used to create Eve. He took from Adam a rib. Some people charge the Bible with inaccuracy because men now have the same number of ribs as women, but this is a specious argument. If I lose my hand, my children will still be born with two hands. Adam had one less rib than Eve, but their offspring inherited the proper number of ribs. God took this particular portion of the body because it contained bony substance and fleshy material. From this He could perform a cell reduction (taking half of the chromosomes) and create woman. He could have created woman instantaneously of dust as He did Adam, but He chose to take a rib from Adam. Why?

    1) This negates the possibility of theistic evolution or any other evolution. God says He took a rib from man and created woman. In biology we learn that the male has an X and Y chromosome, the female two X chromosomes. These separate and recombine to make makes and females. In taking a rib from Adam God was able to take two X chromosomes and create a female. Suppose He created woman first? She has only two X chromosomes - where would He get the Y? This parallels the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus Christ, born of a virgin. There is such a thing as parthenogenesis in rabbits, of course, with a female giving birth without the help of a male, but she always produces a female. One uniqueness of Jesus is that Y chromosome.

    2) Adam was created first; then God taking the rib, produced a female. Why is that important? It demonstrates the uniqueness of Adam's existence, for Adam came not from a woman. Every other male in this world came from a female. Why did God go to all the trouble to do it this way? It demonstrates the unity of the human race. Notice what Adam says in Genesis 2:23: "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

Have you ever wondered about the fact that on the day God created them, He created only one individual? Adam and Eve were one: the same genetic constitution, one individual, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. That is why Eve could partake of the fruit and not plunge the whole human race into sin; Adam was the one held responsible. If God had created man from the dust and woman from the dust, Adam and Eve individually would have had to fall. Jesus Christ could come to save because Adam fell, and as all men die in Adam, so in Jesus Christ all men can be reborn into God's family and be made alive (Romans 5:12).

Adam is the individual responsible for the fall of the human race. Eve fell in Adam, for he is the racial head, the one held responsible. This principle is important concerning the fall because our salvation is based upon it. Adam fell into sin, and every man born into Adam's family was born to die. Thus every man must be reborn into God's family through Jesus Christ in order to have eternal life. As in Adam all are children of Satan, so in the second Adam, Jesus Christ, all become children of God. Without man's unity and fallen nature we would not have one way of salvation obtainable by all men.

Why be concerned with how man and woman came into being? God was very specific in how He created man and what He designed and created for him - so specific that we can take no position other that that He created them perfect. "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright" (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

God created Adam and Eve and gave them the genetic potential for all people on the earth today. Unfortunately, many men do not choose to believe this, but would rather say that somehow man evolved from a lower form of life. Or they may take the position (as some do) of a theistic evolutionist and say that two apes for some unknown reason fell on their knees; they looked upward, God mistook that for prayer, and He created man and woman. Or perhaps somehow God allowed them to evolve and, when they were ready, gave them a soul. in opposition to these variant possibilities, we must accept what God says or accept theories which go counter to the Biblical account.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

THE FOSSIL RECORD

Does the fossil record present a problem in 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 lived 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 amount of Precambrian rock were laid down, yet they contain only single celled fossils. An index fossil is a particular type of fossil presumed to identify rock formations or strata. The great index fossil of the Cambrian rocks is the trilobite, presumed to be one of the earliest forms of life. Trilobites are really very complex little animals with a nervous system, compound eyes and jointed legs. The eyes in some species incorporated advanced principles of optical science. They certainly are 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 impression 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 eighth 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 size 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.

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 a Neanderthal skeleton used 80 years ago as a basis for museum displays had a diseased spine, scientists concluded and the world believed man did not always walk upright. Then they found skeletons from Neanderthals which stood perfectly upright. Subsequently the first skeletons with the curvature of the spine were re-examined and found to have suffered from a form of arthritis. In essence, we located an early human 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 here LaFayette. He found that one can put his features on the skull without any difficulty at all. A Neanderthal skull can be made 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 de 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 reconstructions 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 skull cap, a femur, and a thigh bone! Dubois reported thirty years after the original disclosure that the skull cap of the Java Man was nothing more than the skull cap of a silver gibbon. He also found in Java the large-brained human Wadjak skull. But he hid it for 30 years because his interpretation contradicted its obvious significance. Yet Java Man is still presented in textbooks as one of our ancestors in a long, long line of evolutionary development.

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 form, 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 - to their horror, the jaw bone was that of a pig. Well, men will make mistakes; such is scientific frailty.

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 one is modern. The teeth of the ape have been 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 later, 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 jaw 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.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

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 it 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 they 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 million 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 really know what his fleshy parts looked like. Two, we 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 my 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 really belong to an ancestor or to one of these baboons?

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 - man has evolved. Because of this, they 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, between amphibians and reptiles, between 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 the races: the white race from the chimpanzee, the oriental from the orangutan and the Negro from the gorilla). These are ideas being proposed by science as to how man came into existence.

POPULATION PROBLEMS

How long has man been on the earth? The Bible states that man was created in God's image. The Bible declares that man was created perfect, lived on the earth and fell into sin; after a great Flood which destroyed sinful man, the race started over again with Noah and his family. Biblical chronology would indicate this new beginning some 4300 years ago. To obtain that figure, trace back through the genealogies. Most Bible scholars put the date somewhere between the last 4000 to 6000 years.

Suppose we begin with Mr. and Mrs. Noah 4300 years ago, work out the formula and determine whether the Bible is reliable in regard to population statistics. We will have to account for the present population of three billion people living on the earth in the last 4300 years. Let us discount the fact that Noah and his wife had three children who in turn had wives. We will also discount the fact that Noah lived 950 years and reckon that he lived only 43 years and died. That means Noah only lived long enough to see his own children and died before he saw his grandchildren. Here we have solved two problems: overlapping generation - we now have 100 generations of 43 years each - which in turn solves that age-old problem of the generation gap. If a man and his wife only had two children, the population would not increase but would always be two, so we will give them two and a half children per generation. You must subtract for those who die in each generation, but in doing so you still can develop a formula that will quite conservatively produce the present population of the world, over four billion people, in the last 4300 years, beginning with two people and two and a half children per family per generation. The annual growth rate of that population would be one half of one percent. The present growth rate is two percent per year. So even with one-fourth of the present birth rate the biblical framework is reasonable. These estimates are quite approximate, of course, for population growth rates are affected by many factors.

What about the evolutionist? They will tell you that man lived on the earth one million years ago - some say two million, some eight million. Judging conservatively, we will estimate the evolutionary age of man to be one million years. Begin with two people, Mr. and Mrs. Zinjanthropus, or Mr. and Mrs. Australopithecus. Working with the same formula of no overlapping generations and two and one-half children per generation, you will find that the present population of the world should be 102250 (the number 1 with 2250 zeros after it, a huge number). Fill all of the world, all of the oceans and all of the solar system with people until they extend as far as our most powerful telescope reportedly can see, four billion light years away, and you will account for 1078 people. If evolution is to be reasonable as an explanation for man's origin, we would expect from the evolutionary assumptions to find a vastly larger population living on the earth today than we actually observe.

Not wanting to be accused of being unfair, let us give the evolutionist another formula that would account just for the number of people living today. Instead of two and one-half children per generation, substitute 2.002 per generation, just enough for the population to grow a little each year. Four billion people are then produced at the end of one million years. But even with this formula over four trillion people have lived and died in the last million years. Where are their remains, the bones and the fossils? Human skeletons are very rare, whereas by this formula they should abound throughout the earth. The Biblical framework remains the more reasonable of the two.

EARLY MAN

We often become overly concerned about men with primitive appearance. The Bible says mankind began with a perfect pair. Beginning with Mr. and Mrs. Noah and their three sons and three wives, we began to produce a diversification of people upon the earth. 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 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 feel that civilization started about 5000 years ago. Physical 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.



cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

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 confirmed. 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, ameba to man, is not sufficiently strong enough to consider it as anything more that 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.

A MARRIAGE PROBLEM

Suppose man did evolve from two apes. Somewhere in that life span and that same locality a female would have to evolve together with a male. If they did evolve, were somewhat compatible and produced children, where would the male get his wife: He would have to marry his sister. Even if we start with a small group, as most anthropologists suggest, we still have that same limited choice. The taboo against marrying a sister began about the time of the Egyptian kings when they began to intermarry in order to continue the kingly or divine line. Intermarriage, of course , has a tendency to reproduce the bad traits in man. The Bible, however, begins with Adam and Eve, both perfect and without this problem. They had the same constitution, producing offspring and living 930 years. The Bible says Adam lived 800 years after Seth was born and produced sons and daughters. Even if we grant them just twelve sons and daughters, many of them could be much older than others, perhaps 400-500 years apart. Intermarriage begins, and Cain has a tremendous potential of choices as to whom he is going to marry. In addition, the children of Adam and Eve are going to be more perfect than those living today. The evolutionist, then, lacks the conditions necessary to explain where the first men got their wives. The Biblical account provides them completely.

THE CURSE OF CANAAN

    These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken: and he was uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

    Genesis 9:19-29

Many people believe that this passage explains the origin of races. They suggest that the Negro comes from Canaan because the black color was his curse. But notice two things: verse 22 "And Ham the father of Canaan," and verse 24, "And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him." It was Ham who saw his father and Ham who told his two brothers. Yet Noah says, "Cursed by Canaan." Why?

Ham was not involved in some gross immorality. The Bible simply states that Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father. The other two sons, Shem and Japheth, took a garment and, walking backwards, covered their father, not observing his nakedness. Previous to this action Ham evidently walked in, saw his father, came out and said, "Look at our dad. He has been telling us that we ought to be good boys, yet he is in there drunk." This was not an act of immorality on Ham's part, but disrespect.

Who is Canaan? In the tenth chapter of Genesis we find that Canaan is the youngest son of Ham. Why was he cursed? The answer, in accord with Jewish custom, is suggested in I Samuel. When David slew Goliath, Saul asked, "Whose son is this that I may honor him?" Saul knew who David was, for David had played the harp for him - in fact, Saul had offered David his armor. But now Saul wanted to bless David for his great victory over the Philistines. How did he do it? By blessing Jesse, David's father. By laying blessing and honor on the father, Saul blessed the son. Likewise, when Joseph blessed Ephraim and Manasseh, he also blessed himself. Blessings go back one generation - and this would be equally true of a curse. Had Noah cursed Ham, he would have been placing that curse upon himself. Yet he wanted to curse Ham and all his descendants, so he placed the curse on the youngest son of Ham, which reverts back a generation, covering Ham and all of Ham's children. This also eliminated Shem and Japheth from the curse.

In review, Noah could not have cursed Ham without cursing himself and bringing that curse upon his whole family, so in order to curse Ham he cursed the youngest son of Ham, Canaan, who would have the same background, interests and material mindedness as his father. The curse of the youngest son Canaan covers all his brothers and comes back a generation to his father Ham, but it protects the two other sons of Noah.

What is the curse? Certainly not that Ham changed color instantaneously. The curse is a prophecy. Realizing Ham's attitude, that he was not one who would honor his father, Noah says, ". . . a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." Some people interpret "servants of servants" to mean a slave. But note other similar Biblical expressions. The Lord God is Lord of lords, which means He is the highest Lord of all lords. He is the King of kings, the highest King of all kings. Paul says he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, one of the highest Hebrews because he was of the tribe of Benjamin, one of the two tribes of the southern kingdom who remained true to Jerusalem and did not revolt. A "servant of servants" simply means the highest of all servants, not a slave. Because of Ham's mental attitude, Noah realized he was materialistically minded. A glance at the descendants of Ham will demonstrate that. "Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel . . . Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh . . . " (Genesis 10:8-11). These people built cities. You do not find that description of the descendants of Shem or of Japheth. Noah realized the implications of the mind of ham, concerned with materialistic things and knew that his children would also take up that attitude and interest. A pioneer who builds a city does not have time for reading, education and luxuries - not even to study the things of God. So the curse here is upon a materialistically minded people.

The Bible never mentions the word "race." Which is a man-made term. Instead, the Bible speaks of nations. The descendants of Ham are probably the oriental and colored peoples, for a careful study of history reveals that the descendants of Ham are those who have built the major cities - the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Babylonians and the Assyrians. These were the firs large major empires. The curse is not a curse of color, for color is nothing more than a genetic variation. Why do brown, white and black rabbits exist? They are produced by a genetic variation, as in varied eye colors or the colors of flowers. The different skin colors of man on this earth are simple genetic variations.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

The descendants of Ham, steadily concerned with materialistic things, have provided man with all the major technologies. Dr. Arthur Custance, an anthropologist in Canada, states that from the descendants of Ham we can trace most of the technologies of mankind with few exceptions. The airplane has been traced to them, the toothbrush, writing, arithmetic, ship building and many other inventions which we consider part of our civilization.

By contrast, the descendants of Shem are concerned with spiritual things. The Bible says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." The descendants of Shem include the Israelites or Jewish people. They had the responsibility of taking the message of God to the world, but they failed. The Lord God originally planned to present His message to the high priest, who would then pass it to the Levite priest; he would give it to the twelve tribes, who would pass it on to the world. But Israel kept that message to themselves, and thus God found it necessary to go to the Gentiles.

"God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem." Traditionally the sons of Japheth have been the ones concerned with the intellectual and philosophic things of man. They do not invent much, but they improve on someone else's invention once given to them. "By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations" (Genesis 10:5). The descendants of Japheth (the Gentiles) at the time of Christ were given the responsibility of presenting the message of Christ to the descendants of Ham and Shem.

Thus there is one race - the human race - all descendants of Noah, all concerned with different things because there are various individuals comprising this race. You will find this true today.

At Babel a tower was built, resulting in a judgment and a scattering of nations. Until the time of Babel there was something like a melting pot of people. One had a choice of marrying a descendant of Japheth, Ham or Shem, and all lived near the one community. At the tower of Babel and immediately afterwards, the people scattered and burst into seventy nations (Genesis 11), spreading themselves over the face of the earth.

A family goes to one area and begins to build a civilization. They are similar in appearance, for by heredity children tend to look like their parents. The children only know what they are taught, which in turn they teach their children. The descendants of Ham begin to build cities. Later the descendants of Shem capture these cities. The descendants of Japheth do not accomplish much until they improve upon the other civilizations. Those who stay close to the cultural center continue to learn and develop. Those who pioneer and go farther away become less cultured and less civilized. As people move farther and farther away, back into areas such as Africa, they carry less and less civilization white them. Being hunters like their father Nimrod, they develop cultures based upon hunting. This does not mean that they are any less intelligent because they are hunters.

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 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 traditions. Instead of having an account of the Flood, they come up with myths like the Babylonian Gilgamesh 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, all of the so-called primitive 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 skulls representing primitive man - with the shape of the skull apparently 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 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 primitiveness with the 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 skulls are simply nothing more than degenerate forms of Adam and Eve and of Noah, scattered from this cultural center in the last 4300 years.

CONCLUSION

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 re-evaluate 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 as 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 Japheth. 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.

This is the message we have to proclaim. God created man perfect, but man fell into sin and had need of forgiveness. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator, came and died on the cross as Saviour, providing the payment for man's sin. And He is coming again to judge man. We must realize the unity of the human race, that we are one people, and that each one needs the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the responsibility of the Christian to tell the world.

[Soldier4Christ]

4 The Flood - Where?

The Genesis account of the Flood describes in great detail a phenomenon which is sometimes regarded by theologians and scholars as a local flood.

    And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

    Genesis 7:17-24

Does that sound like a local flood? Note the essentials of the description: the waters prevailed, they were increased upon the earth exceedingly, all of the high hills under the heaven were covered, the water was so high that it covered the highest mountain by a distance of fifteen cubits (a cubit is approximately eighteen inches, so the waters were above the highest mountain some twenty-two and a half feet). Mount Ararat is 16,946 feet in elevation. With water twenty-two and a half feet above that, it is not difficult to conceive of much more than a local flood. Water seeks its own level, so if it is over 17,000 feet at Mount Ararat in Turkey, it will flood out the Mesopotamian Valley and the desert, and it will inundate vast parts of Europe, Asia and the rest of the world.

In verses 21-23 we are told that all flesh died which moved upon the earth - "cattle . . . beast . . . every creeping thing . . . and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." The text clearly denotes that all living things were destroyed except those inside the ark. Limiting the event to a local flood does great injustice to the direct statement of Scripture.

    But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

    Matthew 24:37-39

Here the Lord Jesus uses the account of the universal Flood and its destruction to point to His second coming and judgment, which is also a universal event. As in the days of Noah, when all who were outside the ark were destroyed, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man when all those outside the ark of safety, Jesus Christ (those who have not accepted Him as Saviour), shall be judged and condemned.

Look also at II Peter 3:6: "Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished." The word "overflowed" in the Greek (kataklusmos) means "cataclysmized," and it signifies just that - a total cataclysm. Peter says that the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. That description is used in the New Testament only in reference to the Flood of Noah's day, not to a local or small flood, in which case another word is used (Matthew 7:25, potamos). If Genesis 7 speaks only of a local flood, we must limit Peter's declaration, the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and the meaning of the word "all." If the word "all" in Genesis 7 and Matthew 24 simply means a local area, how do we interpret the word "all" when it appears in other Scriptures? For instance, in Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Is that only those in a local area, perhaps all the people in Los Angeles, or all the people I disagree with, or all the people I do not like? It means all have sinned; it is all-inclusive. This account tells us that all in whose nostrils was the breath of life and who were outside the ark were destroyed.

What was the population at the time of the Flood? Mathematically, we can begin with Adam and Eve, and assume a certain number of children per generation, and allow for those who died. Remembering their long life spans as recorded in Scripture, we recognize that they could have had sons and daughters for many years. However, we shall assume only six boys and six girls per family. The compound figures show nearly three billion people living on the earth by the time of the Flood. That many people would need to be accommodated in much more than just a local area, and it would take more than a local flood for them to be destroyed.

Rather than limit Scripture, it would be far more consistent to accept a universal Flood. It was all-inclusive. It did cover all the earth, it did cover all of the high hills under the whole heaven and it did destroy all animal and plant life. And if there were such an event, we ought to find evidence of two things:

    1) it was possible for Noah to build an ark that would accommodate his family and pairs of all land-dwelling animals, and

    2) there must be geological evidence in today's world that such an event occurred in the past.

cont'd