Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

Life is a Bridge to Eternity when you know the Architect

When we look at the stars and the universe as far as the eye can see, we can contemplate our God, the Master Architect: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host (Psalm 33:6). "For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth.."(Colossians 1:16). Yet, the evolutionist has only chaotic matter to contemplate - impersonal randomness - that, given the laws of science as we know them, could never produce even one strand of life’s code (DNA). The evolutionist has only confusion, questionable scientific theory and a determination to discredit God, regardless of the testimony of the creation order about him.

The mind that is programmed for evolution only will tug and pull at the data to make it fit. On the other hand, the creationist needs only to observe the handiwork of a Master Architect and the evidences of this handiwork in the laws of science and the fossil record. Above all, the creationist sees the Master Planner at work in redeeming mankind.

God has written in the record, "And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life…These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:11-13). We who have entrusted our lives to the Master Architect will spend eternity in His presence.

What single event in human history had the power to split time?

The Christ event was so significant that virtually the entire world has restarted its calendar because of it. Who is this Christ and why is He so special? The Bible says He is Jesus, the Son of the living God. He was preexistent "with God" before the creation of the universe. It was through Christ that God created and now sustains the world (Col 1:16). His birth is so powerful that we now date time from it.

The new millennium is a milestone - a celebration that makes us even more mindful of the impact of Jesus upon our world. Through Jesus Christ you can experience forgiveness and eternal life in heaven, and also, a full and meaningful life here on earth.

[Soldier4Christ]

Pepsi Ads -- "Uh Uh"

Pepsi Cola recently floated a new ad campaign in Israel ... which promptly sank. Orthodox rabbis were outraged over an advertisement featuring an ape slouching along an evolutionary path to become a Pepsi Kid. The message was: Pepsi stands at the pinnacle of evolution.

The rabbis were not amused. They denounced the ad as counter to the biblical teaching on creation and threatened a boycott. Pepsi toned the ad down.

A recent Gallop poll found that nearly half the American people would respond the same way: 47 percent believe God created fully developed human beings about 10,000 years ago. Another 40 percent think the time span was millions of years but believe God directed the process. Only 9 percent believe in evolution by strictly natural law.

Yet, ironically, naturalistic evolution is what public schools and universities are teaching young people. And the vast majority of Americans don't know how to counter it. We know what we believe but we can't explain why we believe it.

Yet there's an argument against evolution that is simple to grasp, that has been known for centuries, that you can use when you talk with friends and teachers.

You see, evolution assumes that change in the living world is unlimited. Obviously, anyone who wants to derive elephants and octopuses and butterflies all from an initial one-celled organism has to assume that biological change is virtually unlimited.

The trouble is, all the changes we have actually observed are limited. Farmers can breed for sweeter corn, bigger roses, or faster horses, but they still end up with corn, roses, and horses. No one has ever produced a new kind of organism. What evolutionists do is take these small-scale changes and extrapolate them: They speculate what might happen if minor changes are added up and extended millions of years into the misty past.

Now, there's nothing wrong with extrapolation per se, but this particular one is unsound. The variation induced by breeding does not continue at a steady rate through each generation. Instead, it is rapid at first and then levels off. Eventually it reaches a ceiling that breeders cannot cross.

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Farmers can breed for sweeter
corn--but it's still corn.

If they try to cross it, the organism grows weaker and more prone to disease -- until it finally becomes sterile and dies out. So you can breed for bigger roses but you'll never get one as big as a sunflower. You can breed for faster horses but you'll never get one as fast as a cheetah.

Darwin believed nature could select among organisms the way a breeder does, which is why he called his theory natural selection. But whether it's done by breeders or nature, selection produces only limited change -- not the unlimited change needed for evolution.

So don't be intimidated when everyone around seems to be promoting evolution -- from public schools to Pepsi Cola. If scientists stick to actual observations, all they have ever seen is the modification of existing categories of living things, not the rise of new categories.

As Genesis puts it, God created living things to reproduce "after their kind." In modern language, they were created to remain true to type -- just as the breeders show.

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Do They Prove Evolution?

Tiny Cave Monsters

Scientists recently discovered a world of strange creatures never seen before. A cave in Romania was opened to reveal vampire spiders, wingless flies, water scorpions that grow "snorkels" to breathe, and leeches that suck up earthworms whole, like a spaghetti noodle.

Journalists heralded the discovery as evidence for evolution. But is it?

The vampire spiders are still spiders; the wingless flies are still flies; the strange scorpions and leeches are still recognizable as scorpions and leeches.

No, the tiny cave monsters don't prove evolution. They illustrate reproduction "after their kind" -- just as Genesis says.

Scientists are apt to present any form of change as evolution. But evolution is not just any change; it is the emergence of new categories of living things. The cave creatures don't represent new categories. They're just modifications of existing categories.

Creationists accept this kind of minor change. The same God who created living things "after their kind" must have built in a capacity for adaptation -- otherwise those "kinds" wouldn't last very long.

Charles Darwin set evolution off on the wrong foot more than a century ago when he listed adaptation as evidence of evolution. It was an error made in reaction to the rigid creationism of his day. Many creationists back then taught that living things never change. So in Darwin's mind, even minor adaptations counted as evidence for evolution.

Creationists back then also taught that living things never die out; so for Darwin, the fact that organisms become extinct counted as evidence for evolution.

[Soldier4Christ]

Even Darwin's finches
are still finches.

Creationists back then taught that living things were created in the same location they are found today. Giraffes were created in Africa, buffalos in North America, llamas in South America. So for Darwin, migration counted as evidence for evolution.

Today, of course, none of these facts affect the evolution debate one way or the other. The older form of creationism was informed by ancient Greek philosophy, which taught that species are eternal. But modern creationists are guided by Scripture.

Genesis says God created "kinds," not species. The phrase "after its kind" suggests that the boundary between kinds is defined by reproduction: A kind is an interbreeding group.

The entire cat family -- from domestic cats to leopards and tigers -- forms a breeding chain and hence constitutes a single "kind." So does the dog family, from our familiar canine friends to wolves and jackals.

And witness the vast diversity that can take place within created kinds. Domestic dogs range from the tiny Chihuahua to the lumbering Saint Bernard, yet they never change into anything besides dogs.

When Darwin make his famous voyage to the Galapagos Islands, he discovered finches and tortoises that differed slightly from island to island. He thought he had discovered evolution in action. But the finches stayed finches -- they never evolved into a new kind of bird -- and the tortoises stayed tortoises.

Today you and I can turn the tables on Darwin. What his finches really show -- just like the strange cave monsters in Romania -- is that change always takes place within created kinds.

Just like Genesis says.

[Soldier4Christ]

Interpreting the Fossil Record        Jigsaw Pieces from the Rocks


Hunting fossils is a hard job, painstakingly scraping away sand under a baking sun. And when the animals you're looking for are small, the task is even harder. But nature has supplied an army of eager helpers: ants.

Yes, paleontologists (scientists who study fossils) have their task made easier by large red harvester ants. These insects instinctively collect small, hard objects -- including fossilized teeth and bones. An anthill can be a treasure chest of tiny fossils.

There's been a lot of controversy in the scientific community in recent years over fossils. You see, Darwin's theory of evolution assumes that life evolves gradually, by imperceptibly tiny steps. Darwinism pictures life as a continuous chain -- from the simplest one-celled organism to the most complex birds and beasts.

But, of course, this continuous chain is nowhere to be seen. In the world today, bears and beavers and bats are all quite distinct. There are clear gaps between major biological categories, with no blurring of the boundaries.

Darwin knew this, of course, so he appealed to the past. He suggested that the missing links have died out and would one day be found in the fossil record. The history of paleontology is largely a history of the search for the missing links. If Darwin was right, the fossil record should show literally millions of transitional forms.

But that's precisely what it does not show. Yes, the fossils do show that life was often very different from today. Some forms of elephants were once hairy: the woolly mammoths. Some forms of reptiles were once gigantic: the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

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Woolly mammoths were still elephants.

But -- here's the important part -- those strange forms still fit clearly within the same basic categories known today. Elephants were still elephants, reptiles were still reptiles. The same gaps exist in the fossil record that exist in the living world today.

This was obvious even in Darwin's day. But paleontology was still in its infancy then, and he hoped the gaps would eventually be filled in as more fossils were discovered. Today museum storerooms are bursting with fossils, and the gaps still exist. It's become irrational to hope they will be filled in by transitional forms.

Some paleontologists have faced the problem head-on and come up with an alternative to Darwin's theory of slow, gradual change. Stephen J. Gould at Harvard suggests that evolution happened in sudden bursts -- too fast to leave behind any fossil evidence.

This may explain the gaps in the fossil record, but it also places scientists in a very awkward position. If you ask why we don't see evolution happening today, they tell us it happens too slowly to be observed. If you ask why we don't see evidence in the fossil record, they tell us it happened too quickly to leave a trace in the rocks. So where's the evidence for evolution? It isn't there.

This is the message we need to bring our friends, our youth groups, and our children's teachers. Most people never hear the case for creation. It's up to you and me to change that. You can even use transcripts of this program to make your point.

[Soldier4Christ]

Clues to the Origin of Life?

Artificial Life

In the beginning was the Original Replicant, floating in a test tube. Then came the Mutants, deformed by harsh ultraviolet rays. They interacted with the Original Replicants to form hybrids.

No, this is not a science fiction novel; it's a description of an experiment conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The characters in the story are artificial molecules designed by chemists in the latest attempt to solve the mystery of life's origin.

It was back in the 1960s that we first began to read headlines claiming that scientists were about to conjure up life in a test tube. Biochemists discovered they could mix ammonia, methane, and water, zap it with an electric spark, and create amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

The scientific community was euphoric. No one had ever dreamed of creating even the simplest building blocks of life before.

But then things ground to a halt. The amino acids never did form proteins or evolve into a living cell. And critics charged that even the amino acids were obtained only by "cheating" -- by rigging the experiment.

You see, origin-of-life experiments are supposed to be re-enactments of what could have happened in a warm pond on the early earth. The most realistic experiment would be pouring various chemicals into water and mixing them up. But no researcher ever does that, because it doesn't yield anything.

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Life in a test tube? The experiments are "rigged."

Instead, scientists tinker with the experiment at several points.

For example, in a real pond, there would be all sorts of chemical reactions -- many of them cancelling out the reactions the scientist needs. So what does he do? He starts with pure ingredients.

That's strike number one. In a natural setting like the early earth, there is no way to purify the starting materials to get the results you want.

Origin-of-life experiments often use ultraviolet light to simulate sunlight. But certain wave lengths of light destroy amino acids. So what does the researcher do? He screens them out.

Strike number two. In a natural setting you have to deal with real sunlight -- in all its wavelengths.

The amino acids formed in these experiments are delicate; they easily break back down into the chemicals that make them up. So what does the researcher do? He rigs a trap to remove them from the reaction site as soon as they form, to protect them from disintegration.

Strike number three. Nature doesn't come equipped with protective traps. Any amino acids that form in nature quickly disintegrate.

The problems are so great that some scientists have given up imitating real life and are trying their hand at creating artificial life: man-made Replicants and Mutants, like the experiments at MIT.

But even the most successful experiments tell us nothing about what can happen in nature. They only tell us what can happen when brilliant scientists direct and manipulate conditions.

So try turning the tables on your friends who are evolutionists. The experiments don't prove life can arise spontaneously in nature. On the contrary, they give experimental evidence that life can only be created by an intelligent agent directing and controlling the process.

And isn't that what we Christians have been saying all along?

[Shammu]

Figures, you would wait till I left for a bit.

[Soldier4Christ]

Figures, you would wait till I left for a bit.

I just got back. I had to leave for awhile myself.

[Soldier4Christ]

                        We Are Related to Adam and not to Apes!

"And God said, Let Us make man in our image, after Our likeness; So God created man in His own image, in the image, of God created him; male and female created He them." Genesis 1:26,27 . Thus, from what the Bible says, we know that evolution cannot possibly be correct. The Bible very clearly states, in unmistakable language, that God created man and woman in a very special way. The facts of science as found in the fossil record, provide powerful positive evidence to support the Biblical record of Creation. What is the relevance of this issue for society? If apes were in our ancestry, then we are the result of chance random processes and that means there is no Absolute Authority. And if there is no one who sets the rules then everyone can do whatever he likes or hopes he can get away with. You see, evolutionism is a religion which enables people to justify writing their own rules. But if we are of Adam's race, then there are absolutes because the Creator sets the rules. The sin of Adam was that he did not want to obey the rules God set, but do his own will. He rebelled against God, the Creator, and we all suffer from the same sin: rebellion against the Absolute Authority. Evolution has become the so-called "scientific" justification for people to continue in this rebellion against God. Dr. John Baumgardner describes evolution as "intellectual fraud" because it is a religious world view cloaked in scientific terminology.

The Bible tells us in the book of Genesis that there is a true and reliable account of the origin and early history of life on earth. Increasing numbers of scientists are realizing that when you take the Bible as your basis and build your models of science and history upon it, all the evidence from the living animals and plants, the fossils and the cultures fit. This confirms that the Bible really is the Word of God and can be trusted totally.

Well, there is no "missing link" between man and animals. But there is a "missing link" that we all need. That is a link between ourselves and God, our Creator. Because of sin and man's rebellion, our relationship with God is broken. God seems far away to most people, because our sin seperates us from Him. Jesus Christ, God's Son, died on the Cross and rose from the dead, to take away the sin which cuts us off from Him, and to break the power of sin and death. "There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men"(I Tim. 2:5-6)

You have no links with the animal creation, but if you admit your sin and accept the forgiveness available through Jesus Christ, you can have a link with the Creator of the universe. That is awesome!

[Soldier4Christ]

Archaeopteryx

For a number of years, Archaeopteryx, one of the oldest known bird specimens since it came to light in Germany in 1861, has been considered by many evolutionists as the most likely transitional form representing either a reptilian or dinosaurian ancestry. Many evolutionists point to the fact that this bird had claws on its wings, teeth, and other "ancient" features that seem to be reptilian.

It is true that modern birds do not have teeth. However, some extinct birds did have teeth. The point is, no fossils have ever been found that show a gradual disappearance of teeth in birds. They either had teeth, or did not have teeth. This is true with many classes of vertebrates. Some have teeth and some don’t. In the fossil record, these extinct varieties appear to be ones derived from their own like kinds.   

Are claws on the wings evidence of a transition between reptiles and birds? There are living birds today that have claws on the wings such as the hoatzin in South America and even the ostrich but no one is suggesting that any of these birds are intermediates because they are very much alive and well today. In addition, feathers are a very distinctive characteristic of birds!

Recently however, the emphasis has been the link between birds and dinosaurs. According to one camp, Archaeopteryx with its toothed jaws, long lizardlike tail, feathered body and modern-looking wings is in contention for the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. One college text book, The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs, declares that "birds are dinosaurs" and Archaeopteryx is used as the classic example. Also this persuasion was one of the main points in the movie Jurassic Park. Now many people and especially young students have the impression that birds are really only dinosaurs that have evolved further in time.

To set the record straight about Archaeopteryx, you should know that not only creationists discount these absurd ideas, but even a prominent evolutionist who is an expert on ancient birds now has changed his mind. Larry Martin is a paleo-ornithologist and the curator for vertebrate paleontology at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. He is one of the world's foremost experts on birds of the Mesozoic era. The following is from an article he wrote for The Sciences magazine ( March/April 1998).

      "Warm-bloodedness seized the imagination of the public and paleontologists alike. 
      The possibility that dinosaurs shared with mammals and birds certain advanced traits 
      of intelligence, activity and complexity of behavior was hugely appealing. The burning question then became how to study physiology and behavior – attributes that do not fossilize well – in animals so long dead. The suggestion that birds were living dinosaurs answered that question.

      In retrospect, it is probably telling that most of the scientific support for the dinosaurian origin of birds came from the people studying dinosaurs, who were delighted to learn 
      that their subjects were still alive. As Feduccia points out, most ornithologists did not 
      like the theory then, and they do not like it now. I began to grow disenchanted with the bird-dinosaur link when I compared the eighty-five or so anatomical features seriously proposed as being shared by birds and dinosaurs. To my shock, virtually none of the comparisons held up. For example, the characteristic upward-projecting bone on the 
      inner ankle in dinosaurs lies on the outer ankle in birds. In some cases I even 
      discovered that the supposedly shared features occurred on entirely different bones. 
      That is a bit like saying that you and I are related because my nose resembles your big toe."

      "The confusion over anatomy stems in part from spotty ornithological literature. Although many ornithologists study the songs, brilliant plumage and behavior of birds, few choose to scrutinize the smelly bones and muscles. By the same token, dinosaur specialists who advocate a bird-dinosaur link have been largely content to leave avian anatomy to the ornithologists. So it is not surprising that the literature is vague about many aspects of the avian skeleton"

      "The consequences is that the supporters of the bird-dinosaur relation often learn, to 
      their horror, that a certain aspect of dinosaur anatomy is not in fact "just the way it is in birds," as they had previously announced. Damage control then usually takes one of three tactical forms. The investigators may simply ignore the inconsistency, because so much other support exists for their hypothesis. They may change the interpretation of dinosaurian anatomy to match the avian model. Or they may agree that modern birds 
      have a certain anatomical construction, but assert that Archaeopteryx is different and more like a dinosaur. (Indeed, the existing anatomical knowledge about both dinosaurs and Archaeopteryx is just blurry enough to leave a broad middle ground where all the bird-dinosaur comparisons that do not precisely match can be justified nonetheless.)

      Such Band-Aids have been applied to almost every anatomical feature that supposedly links dinosaurs to birds. When the burden of ad hoc repairs became too heavy for me, I had to abandon the theory altogether. It was a disappointment. How wonderful it would have been if dinosaurs had escaped extinction!" 

      "As I weigh those recent finds, it looks to me as if the dinosaur connection is in trouble. Yet old desires die hard. A colleague of mine recently told me that the dinosaur 
      hypothesis should be maintained because no clear counterhypothesis exists to replace 
      it. I found that suggestion dangerously similar to arguing that I should follow some kind 
      of religious belief because if I do not, I will be without faith."

I appreciate Larry Martin's  objectivity and honesty  in his appraisal of these facts.  Even though he believes archaeopteryx probably evolved from some reptilian ancestor, he points out very clearly the fallacies in the way that evolutionists think. The moral of the story is that such poor attention to detail seems to be the rule and not the exception and has been repeated with hominid fossils and others as well.   In their zeal to prove their beliefs,  evolutionists often distort or misinterpret  the facts.  This is certainly a good example of scientists' pre-conceived ideas dictating their science.

Let's consider a subtle and overlooked premise in regard to this article about archaeopteryx. Often, finding the right answers to a problem can be difficult if we are asking the wrong questions. In this case, the assumption is that fossils are related in some way if they have similar anatomy. That is because the underlying premise is that evolution is a fact. Thus similar structures might be evidence of ancestry. However, what if evolution is not fact? Then there is another way to look at the issue. Maybe similar structures are evidence of a common architect or designer and are not necessarily related to ancestry.  Finding  the truth depends on asking the right questions to begin with. And after all, isn't "beginnings" the most basic question? 

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Is Similarity Proof?

Scientists often use homology to support the theory of evolution. Homology is the study of similar structures in different animals. For instance the forelimbs, or arms, of humans are similar to the forelimbs of apes, monkeys, most other mammals, birds, etc. Also the human eye is very similar to the eyes in other vertebrates. The evolutionist say these similar (homologous) structures in different animals exist because we have evolved from common ancestors. The creationist maintains that similar structures exist in different animals because God, the Master Engineer, created similar structures for similar needs. We see this in human engineering. All automobiles are not identical, but engineers, utilizing their knowledge and training, build all automobiles according to good engineering principles. Thus, most cars are quite similar.

Although homology has been taught in schools for years, it has been disproved as a evidence for evolution for over 25 years. In his book entitled, Homology, An Unsolved Problem, a British biologist and evolutionist, Sir Gavin de Beer, declared that evolutionists were wrong when they claimed that homologous structures exist because they had been inherited from a common ancestor. After careful research, he found that the scientific evidence related to homologous organs and structures was very much against what he expected as an evolutionist. The evidence did not fit evolutionary theory.
 

                  What are problems with Homology

There are many similar looking animals which could never be related. For instance, evolutionists can't explain the homologous shape of sea mammals and fish by saying that they evolved from a common ancestor. No evolutionist thinks for a moment that they did! 

The first thing wrong with homology as proof of evolution is the notion that evolution is the only explanation for similarities. If evolution were the only possible explanation for similarities, it might be a good argument. But the person who believes God created living kinds of creatures has another explanation to offer.  That is simply that God developed a basic plan and used this plan in creating living things. Thus similar structures were designed for similar functions.

One significant error in the logic of using homology to prove relationship has already been discussed. That was that  archaeopteryx is a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds. A second mistake that most students have been taught is that of the supposed lineage of horses. For years, students were taught, and many still believe that Eohippus, or Dawn Horse, is related to modern horses. Eohippus is now considered to be a close relative of the rock rabbit! Why do paleobiologists no longer believe in the "evolutionary history" of the horse?  One reason is that fossil bones of horses have been found in the same rock strata where the Dawn Horse was found. Modern horses were created after their kind just as were all creatures.  There are other reasons, too. The fossils that evolutionists linked in  their series actually came from all over the world, not just America. As for size, some modern horses (like Shetland ponies) are no larger than the smaller "horses" found in the fossil record.

But why did evolutionists ever think fossils from different parts of the world should be linked together in the first place?  Part of the reason is that they were fooled by their own theory. The Theory of Evolution said that modern animals should develop from similar but different animals of the past. Simply put, evolutionists fit the fossil bones of different animals into a series and said they were horses, because the bones fit their Theory of Evolution!

[Soldier4Christ]

ANOTHER GOSPEL

      "But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your
      minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
      For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we
      preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a
      different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough."
      (II Cor. 11: 3-4 NIV)

Our generation is under an attack that is resulting in intellectual, moral and spiritual suicide. Many are becoming casualties of what Dr. James Dobson has called an "awesome civil war on values." Tim LaHaye’s book, The Battle for the Mind, exposes a secular worldview - secular humanism - and describes humanism’s corrosive impact on the morality of America.

Simply stated, what we see happening in America today is the preaching of a different "gospel" and a different "Jesus" than that of the orthodox Judeo-Christian faith. A distorted Christian worldview has been presented which has been embraced by many, even in the church. There are those that profess Jesus; however, the question needs to be asked, which Jesus? Is he the Jesus of Scripture or a Jesus made by the imagination of man?

The framework for the Biblical worldview consists of three historical events as described in scripture: a recent creation; The Fall of man resulting in the curse and judgment; and the Redemption, Resurrection, and imminent return of Jesus Christ.

The presentation of a "gospel" based on something other than these truths is a deception and a lie. An embellishment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ often deifies man, resulting in either "new age" beliefs or "mind science" religions that undermine the sovereignty of God. More often than not, though, there is an omission of the scriptural truth. If the truth is changed about who Jesus Christ is, then there is no hope for salvation. If the story of Adam and the Fall is changed , then there is no need for Jesus’ redemptive work. Finally, if Genesis and the Creation story is allegorized then the rest of the story is an allegory or myth.

To understand the full revelation of Jesus as savior and redeemer, we must first understand Him as creator of all. Francis Schaeffer states in his book, Genesis in Space and Time, "Christianity as a system does not begin with Christ as Savior, but with the infinite-personal God who created the world in the beginning and who made man significant in the flow of history. And man’s significant act in revolt has made the world abnormal."

To correctly understand the Gospel message and man’s need to be "born again", one needs to understand the real and literal historic curse resulting from the actions of a historic and literal Adam and Eve.

Present day skeptics are focusing their attack on the truth of Biblical creation more than on any other doctrine of scripture. The greatest area of attack, thus, is Genesis. As the Book of Origins, Genesis contains the structural base of all Christian doctrine, directly or indirectly. Destroy the logical base, this foundation, and the structure is seriously weakened.

Unbelievers attack all the Bible, of course, especially the miracles and prophecies, but they direct their greatest attacks against the truth of recent creation and its corollary doctrine, the global Noachian Flood. If they can destroy these two doctrines, the rest will fall eventually. That is why Peter’s defense of these two great facts of history (II Peter 3:3-6) is so vital for today. These two great historical events are the real antidote to the naturalistic worldview that is so prevalent today.

The sad aspect of this conflict is that many Christians are compromising the scriptural view of origins by trying to force the evolutionary ages of geology into the Genesis account of Creation. They are trying to accommodate their belief to the unbelieving worldview of evolution. Yes, they still affirm their belief in Christ and maybe in his imminent return, and these are indeed vital doctrines, but they are not defending the true Christian faith when they dilute the historical authenticity of the foundational chapters of the Bible. In effect, they are believing a different "gospel" than the gospel of Jesus Christ. This often leads to doubt and unbelief of scripture resulting in a loss of faith in the power and effectiveness of scripture as the Word of God. In essence, evolution denies scripture as well as the very existence of the God of the Bible.

The apostle Jude exhorts believers to "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints." (Jude 3) His warning refers primarily to professing Christians who would dilute the faith instead of defending it.

In the same sense, Martin Luther echoed the same sentiments: " If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace, if he flinches at that point."

I Peter 3:15 also exhorts us to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have, that is to defend the faith. If our faith is in a different "gospel," then what hope is there for us? There is only one real Gospel of Jesus Christ and that is founded on the truth of Genesis and the Creation account. Any other "gospel" is really no "gospel" but is a figment of the imagination. Consider Paul’s warning which he wrote to the Galatians. " I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are tuning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people" (today, this could well mean evolutionists) "are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!" (Galatians 1: 6-9 NIV)

You see, God’s identity and the revelation of Jesus as the son of God are associated, in part, with the Holy Spirit’s revelation about their work of Creation. When man denies God's Word and His sovereign work of Creation in favor of evolution, even theistic evolution, the authority of the Word of God is undermined. God the Father and Jesus Christ, then, are no longer the same as the Ones described throughout Scripture and we thus are believing in a "different gospel."