Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
There were these three professionals sitting around a table talking about the oldest profession. The Doctor says, "Well, the Bible says that God took a rib out of Adam to make woman. Since that clearly required surgery, then the oldest profession is medicine." The engineer says, "No, the Bible also says that God created the whole world out of void and chaos. To do that, God must surely have been an engineer. So engineering is the oldest profession." The lawyer smiles and leans forward and says, "Ah, who do you think created the Chaos?"
The Christian faith maintains as a foundational belief from the Bible that the universe was created by the infinite God, simply by speaking it into existence:
Genesis 1:1 (NKJV) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
There is a battle today over the origins of the universe. The tension is really one between philosophical beliefs rather than scientific evidence. The famous Scopes trial was the beginning of the public battle, but it rages on even more furiously today.
The foundation of evolutionary thought is that there is no design or designer to our universe. All is governed by time, chance, survival of the fittest, mutations, and natural selection that bring us to where we are today. The existence of a God establishes purpose and design, and most importantly dependence upon a God. You see, if God created the world, then man is accountable to Him. To escape this accountability, man has come up with the idea of evolution. If you do away with God, then you have no accountability, and you are free to do what you wish. That's why there is and always will be a fierce battle by evolutionists to keep any theory of intelligent design or creationism out of the classrooms. Their philosophical and unproven presuppositions demand it.
Harvard biologist and renowned evolutionist, Richard Lewontin, gave the game away in a revealing article in The New York Review of books in January of 1997. While expressing skepticism for "unsubstantiated just so stories," he nonetheless accepts the standard story of evolution. Why? Here is what he said, "We take the side of science in spite of the absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, . . . Because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori (derived by logic, without observed facts) adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door" (emphasis DBC)
There it is. Science is willing to go where the evidence does not lead in order to keep the possibility of a God out of the equation. And why is this? Because admitting that a God is behind it all is to admit our dependence, our accountability to someone outside ourselves. And so the battle rages, but it is not really a scientific battle but a philosophical one. Never forget that.
On March 11, the Denver Post reported that a poll by The People For The American Way, an organization certainly not friendly to religion, revealed that 79%, almost eight out of ten Americans believe that the theory of creation ought to be taught alongside the theory of evolution in the public schools. That scares proponents of materialistic evolution. So the battle will rage on - not for a true examination of the facts and the evidence, but a battle for the minds of mankind, for the right to declare our independence from God, for the right to determine our own standards of right and wrong, to worship no one but ourselves. That's what is at stake. It is a battle of foundations. Evolution and Intelligent Design theories are not compatible, and evolutionists know and acknowledge it. One rejects the existence of God altogether, while the other glorifies God.
What does science tell us about evolution? Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith, who has a whole long list of letters after his name, wrote a book called The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory. In this book he demonstrates the absurdity of evolution on the basis of one great reality, and that one great reality is the encoded information in the DNA of living organisms. Every living organism has in it DNA. DNA is genetic material, and on that genetic material in every living thing is a code, and that is an operative code. And that living organism, whether you're talking about a cell or whether you're talking about a man and everything in between, all of that operation of every living thing is dependent on that encoded information. And listen to this, every different living thing has a completely different code.
Darwin had no clue about that. There was no genetic study when he wrote his Origin of the Species. He didn't know anything about DNA. He didn't know anything about chromosomes. He didn't know anything about genetics. It didn't exist as a science, he was just describing what he thought he was seeing. It was all according to appearance and nothing more.
"The entire realm of genetics", Wilder-Smith points out, "is all about information, storage and retrieval was totally unknown to Darwin". Every living thing is programed by its DNA. If you're talking about flowers, one may be red, another blue, because there's information in the DNA in the genetics that causes that to happen. That's a code of information in every living thing.
Science has tried to tell us that evolution is a process called mutation, that living organisms have the capacity to mutate. But you need to understand this, mutations do not change the nature or the kind of any living organism. They don't make it anything other than it is. What mutations involve, and this is important, is always a loss of existing information. There is never a gain of information. Mutations never add new genetic information. Mutations therefore do not work toward an upward evolutionary process.
Dr. Werner Gitt, a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, answered this question; Can new information originate in a living organism through mutations? And this is his response, "Mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and in general the result of mutations is injurious. New blueprints for new functions or new organs cannot arise. Mutations cannot be the source of new information."
The big issue, the issue that is bringing down evolution, is the study of the origin of information, it's called "information theory". Where did the information come from? Where did the code come from? A monkey has a monkey code, and the DNA and the chromosomes and the genetics just keep making the monkey behave like a monkey. There's no code in there to turn the monkey into a man. There's no such thing as jumping out of your species.
Where did this genetic information come from? It couldn't evolve out of nowhere. It's too precise. Wilder-Smith says this, "Darwin's so-called gradualism postulated in the last analysis, all forms of biology were derived from a single, simple cell which by an unbroken series of small gradualistic changes gave rise to an unbroken chain of steps from the original cell up to man himself and biology was strictly continuous." This is just unbelievable, and only a man in Darwin's time who didn't know genetics would ever come up with such a statement, because if a one-celled thing developed into a man, then all the encoded information necessary to run that one-celled thing and to run everything from then on all the way up, including the man, had to be in the original cell. And if it wasn't in the original cell, then where did it come from? That's the question. It's ridiculous. They know that all of the encoded information to run every living thing in the universe is not contained in a one-celled amoeba. What is contained in a one-celled amoeba is the code for a one-celled amoeba.
Wilder-Smith goes on and says, "There was one great aspect of reality about which Darwin and indeed everyone of his epic knew nothing, I'm referring to the modern science of information theory, for if a primeval kind of amoeba is to develop up to a primate, that primeval cell will have to gather all sorts of new information on how to make kidneys, livers, four-chamber hearts, cerebra and cerebella". Where does this one-celled thing collect information that it needs to be a monkey? How does monkey DNA become the DNA of man?
First Corinthians 15 says:
1 Corinthians 15:39 (NKJV) All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.
That's how it is, and it's all determined by the genetic code, and they don't cris-cross and jump over those bounds.
Wilder-Smith further writes, "Assuming that original primeval form of life was kind of an amoeba where did it obtain the almost infinite number of bits of information required to be stored in its DNA storage and retrieval system? In order to transform the amoeba-type of cell to a mammal, a primate, an octopus or a bee, new bits of holistic information are required. Neither the primeval amoeba-type of cell nor the inorganic matter of which it is constructed contains such highly specialized holistic information which is necessary to transform the alleged amoeba into say an anthropoid ape. Is it legitimate to assume that such incredible amounts of information arose spontaneously out of thin air by pure chance?" Absolutely ridiculous!
To believe in something just happening like this would be, like believing a bomb hit a print shop, and the paper and ink flies through that whole building, and as the ink falls on paper it prints Webster's Unabridged Dictionary without a mistake. There is about as much of a chance of that happening as there would be that everything is working the way it does, if nobody made it.
Every living organism in the universe has its own code. How did it get that code? Where did it come from? To make evolution the answer is ridiculous. It had to come from a divine mind who made everything.
Why, then, do scientists continue to advocate this ridiculous theory of evolution motivated by chance? Why do they do that? Well, the bottom line is they do it to avoid God. They do that to push God out of their lives, to avoid His law, to avoid His standards, to avoid His will, to avoid His Word, and to avoid His judgment on their lives.
Romans 1:20-21 (NKJV) For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
That's the issue - ultimately - WORSHIP - expression of dependence, adoration, obedience and thanks. Man, in his fallen state, does not want that. He wants to be independent. It started back in the Garden of Eden. Satan tempted Eve with the possibility of being like God, independent of God, and she fell for it.
What gives God the absolute authority over man? I'm looking for a one word answer; what is it? - creation. God is the Creator of all things, and we owe Him our obedience and our worship. We are not here by chance, we are not an accident, we are not a mutation, we are the direct creation of God. God created us, and He can command us.
The Bible clearly and repeatedly states that God is the creator of everything! Let me just show you this because it's so important for us to understand.
Genesis 1:1 says it, it can't be said any more clearly or comprehensively:
Genesis 1:1 (NKJV) In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
In the great expanse of eternity which stretches behind Genesis 1:1, the universe was unborn and creation existed only in the mind of God. In His sovereign majesty, God dwelt alone:
Genesis 1:3 (NKJV) Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
This is creation ex nihilo, out of nothing. There was no one to suggest plans to God, or to suggest alterations to the plans God had. There was no one to defeat God's purpose. God was alone. He could do as he pleased.
John 1:1-3 (NKJV) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Now how else can you say it? There's no evolution in John 1:3, "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." Nothing is in existence that He didn't create.
Hebrews 11:3 (NKJV) By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
"By faith" - it's the only way we understand, not by empirical analysis. In other words, you have to believe the Bible. Notice carefully the end of the verse, "so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible." Now there is an absolute statement that totally discounts evolution. What you see in the created world was not made out of some other material. But rather everything you see in God's created universe was made by Him out of nothing. And that's exactly what it says in the book of Genesis.
Speaking of Christ who is God, Paul says:
Colossians 1:16 (NKJV) For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
Did you notice the emphasis on "all" in these verses? "All things were created." What do you mean by that? Well, "In heaven" - that would be everything that exists in the universe, everything. "And on earth," - everything in our little microcosm, this earth, everything outside this earth and everything on this earth He created, everything. And listen to this, "Visible and invisible." You can see a mountain, He made it. You can't see the wind, but He made it. You can see an ocean, He made it. You can't see an electric current going through the air, but He made it. Visible and invisible, and that includes angelic beings called "thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities. "All things", repeating it again, "were created through Him and for Him". Could it get much clearer than this? The Bible is relentless in its affirmation of this truth.
Deuteronomy 4:32 (NKJV) "For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard.
There was a day when God created man on the earth. He is not the final stop in a multi-billion year process of evolution. There was a day, we know it to be the sixth day as Genesis tells, when God created the earth.
The Psalms extol God as creator over and over again:
Psalms 104 (NKJV) Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty, 2 Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment, Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain. 3 He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters, Who makes the clouds His chariot, Who walks on the wings of the wind, 4 Who makes His angels spirits, His ministers a flame of fire. 5 You who laid the foundations of the earth, So that it should not be moved forever, 6 You covered it with the deep as with a garment; The waters stood above the mountains. 7 At Your rebuke they fled; At the voice of Your thunder they hastened away.
You know, the ridiculous irrational perspective of evolution only tries to solve the question of how life generated on earth, how in the world do they hope to explain how you get an infinite universe? God stretched it out. He made the oceans, He made the earth. The Psalm goes on like that. "He put the springs in the valleys", verse 10 says. It was He who made the wild animals and the birds. He's the one that caused the grass to grow, (verse 14).
Psalms 104:24 (NKJV) O LORD, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all. The earth is full of Your possessions;
There's no credit given here to some irrational chance. Look at what it says,"In wisdom You have made them all." He made 'all' things! And the more we know scientifically, the deeper we penetrate into the incredible mysteries of this creation, the more wise the creator becomes. "The earth is full of Your possessions" - the word "possessions" comes from the Hebrew word qinyan, [kin-yawn'] which means: "creation or creatures". In His infinite wisdom, God made every creature that exists.
Let me talk to you for a moment about one of God's creatures, the woodpecker.
A woodpecker hammers an average of 15-16 times a second. That's why they drive you nuts if you have one that comes to your house! That's nearly twice as fast as a sub-machine gun fires. That's incredible! The bird's head, when it's doing this, is traveling at more than twice the speed of a bullet. The force of the woodpecker's head, as it comes and hits the tree, is moving at 1000 times the force of gravidity. That's like if you're in one of those Apollo moon rockets, launching into space, it's 250 times the force they feel. Question: What keeps the woodpecker from beating its brains out? God does. God did it! First of all, He made the woodpecker with a really hard head. He gave him a chisel tipped beak so he could be more efficient. He also put on the woodpecker, unlike other birds, feathers over its nostrils. You know how the wood chips fly when you use a chain saw? The stuff flies all over? The same thing happens in a smaller way with a woodpecker, so over his nostrils he's got feathers, sort of a little filtering system like I have on my chain saw so that he doesn't breathe in all the stuff. Between the beak and the brain of a woodpecker, unlike any other bird, there's a shock absorber, a tissue that God has put there that's literally a shock absorber. Scientists look at it and agree that it's better than any shock absorber they've come up with. In fact, God has also made the woodpecker so that it has different neck muscles than other birds. The neck muscles are able to lock in. If you're going that fast and accidentally turn your head, it could really hurt! So God made this incredible creation. The woodpecker's tongue is a whole other topic. How did that evolve? How many woodpeckers would have had to beat their brains out before they developed a shock absorber? Where in the genetic code of a one celled amoeba does it have DNA for a shock absorber? Does this make sense? No! God, in his wisdom, created this amazing creature.
Psalm 104 goes on to talk about the sea great and broad in which are swarms without number, animals small and great, there the ships move along, and Leviathan, the sea monster frolics there as well as the great whales. Then it says this:
Psalms 104:31 (NKJV) May the glory of the LORD endure forever; May the LORD rejoice in His works.
It's all His. He made it all, there's never any other explanation for it.
The prophet Isaiah speaks of God's creative power in Isaiah chapter 40:
Isaiah 40:28 (NKJV) Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
Malachi, the prophet, emphasizes the same thing, God is the Father of us all.
Malachi 2:10 (NKJV) Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously with one another By profaning the covenant of the fathers?
Man is not the end of an evolutionary chain, he is the direct creation of God as is everything else.
Mark 10:6 (NKJV) "But from the beginning of the creation, God 'made them male and female.'
God created man, He did not just evolve. Over and over and over this emphasis is made in Scripture:
Ephesians 3:9 (NKJV) and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ;
People, we exist because God created us. We are not here by chance, we are not a mutation from a one celled amoeba. We were created by God in His image. If you deny creation you are nothing but a highly developed animal.
Baron Erik Von Kuehnelt Leddhin of Austria says, "For the genuine materialists there is no fundamental, only a gradual evolutionary difference between a man and a pest, a noxious insect."
According to evolution, man is quantitatively better than the animals, that is he has some features that animals don't have, but qualitatively he's not better. He has a bigger brain quantitatively, but qualitatively he was not created in God's image. Therefore, it is ethically wrong to violate the rights of other animals who are our literal brothers, evolutionarily speaking.
And we hear all that today, don't we, all the time? That infamous organization called PETA, (People Eating Tasty Animals) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, their national director, Ingrid some-thing-or-other, made this statement, "A rat is a pig is a boy...A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." No difference. All higher forms of life, a rat being a higher form of life in her view, are to be considered equal. One animal rights activist said, "Killing chickens is equal to the holocaust, perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews." When you buy into evolution, man is of no more value than a chicken.
On their web site, PETA has a picture of Wendy from Wendy's restaurant with a bloody butcher knife in her hand and the caption reads: "Wicked Wendy's old fashion murderers." PETA says that eating meat is murder, because they believe that a cow is equal in value to a man. But God, the creator said this to Peter, "Rise, Peter; kill and eat" (Acts 10:13). Listen to what God said to Noah:
Genesis 9:1-3 (NKJV) So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. 2 "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea. They are given into your hand. 3 "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs.
An article on PETA's web site reads, "In response to our complaints, the Australian attorney general for Queensland, the RSPCA, and the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles are investigating an episode of Survivor II in which a contestant stabbed a pig to death. The U.S. Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act forbids airing the killing of animals for entertainment purposes." Really! Why is the killing of people okay?
How far does this "protect the animals thing" go? You probably won't believe what I found on PETA's web site: Titled "Spiders Climb the Ladder of Success"
Imagine being trapped at the bottom of an enormous well with towering, slippery porcelain walls, and a huge flood could happen at any moment. Panic turns to relief when you notice a hand made 12-wooden-rung rope ladder that you quickly climb to safety.
The Spider Ladder is that kind of lifesaver for eight-leggers who would otherwise be trapped (and possibly drowned!) in your bathtub. Contact Hawkin's Bazaar, St. Margaret, Harleston, Norfolk IP20 0HN; tel.: 01986 782536--or visit www.hawkin.co.uk.
PETA's two new billboards urge people on both sides of the abortion debate to be merciful to animals by choosing not to eat them. One Billboard reads: Pro-Choice? Choose vegan. The other one reads: Pro-Life? Go Vegetarian. This is a mocker of the murder of babies. I didn't find one word against abortion on the PETA's web site. It's okay to kill unborn babies but make sure you protect the spiders.
In a FAQ section on the web site I found these questions and answers:
"Where does the animal rights movement stand on abortion?"
There are people on both sides of the abortion issue in the animal rights movement, just as there are people on both sides of animal rights issues in the pro-life movement. And just as the pro-life movement has no official position on animal rights, neither does the animal rights movement have an official position on abortion.
But they also said this, "One of the central beliefs shared by most animal rights people is rejection of harm to any animal, human or otherwise." How can you feel it is wrong to harm a human and not have a position on abortion?
"How can you justify spending your time on animals when there are so many people who need help?"
There are very serious problems in the world that deserve our attention; cruelty to animals is one of them. We should try to alleviate suffering wherever we can. Helping animals is not any more or less important than helping human beings--they are both important. Animal suffering and human suffering are interconnected.
Do you see the devaluing of human life that these people do?
Isn't hunting okay as long as I eat what I kill?"
Did the fact that Jeffrey Dahmer ate his victims justify his crimes? What is done with a corpse after its murder doesn't lessen the victim's suffering.
Listen, people, God said, "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you." But PETA says, "It is murder to kill an animal." This kind of idiocy comes because these people really do believe that man is simply the end of an evolutionary series of chance occurrences that has no purpose and has no destiny and is not made in the image of God. He is not bearing any dignity beyond any other along the line in that evolutionary process.
What is our response to the truth that God is our creator? Worship!
Revelation 4:11 (NKJV) "You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created."
God created us, and we are responsible to give Him worship. Worship is attributing ultimate worth to something. Worship is valuing one thing above all else. It's literally "worth-ship". So when we sing praises to God, we are worshiping, because we are proclaiming that He has the greatest possible worth; that His value is above that of gold, or silver, or jewels, or houses, or land. We are testifying that His power exceeds that of every king, President, or dictator in history; that the glory of his holiness outshines the billions of suns in every galaxy. When we worship God, we are saying that nothing compares to Him. He is above all, He is greater than all. Everything in creation pales to insignificance next to the sovereign Lord of the universe.
The Psalms are the hymn book of ancient Israel, and they are full of examples of worship and praise to God. Listen to Psalm 148
Psalms 148:1-5 (NKJV) Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; Praise Him in the heights! 2 Praise Him, all His angels; Praise Him, all His hosts! 3 Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him, all you stars of light! 4 Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, And you waters above the heavens! 5 Let them praise the name of the LORD, For He commanded and they were created.
That's how it is always in Scripture...always. God is given full credit and full glory for the creation. Without creation, there is no answer to the question, Who am I, and Why am I here or even Why should I behave a certain way? But if the Bible's teaching on creation is true, we know exactly who we are and why we are here and what God wants of us. Worship, love, obedience! The fact of creation is the source of our oughtness, the source of moral absolutes.
So what is our response to the God who created all things? Acknowledging that man is a creature with meaning and purpose - created in God's image. To recognize that we belong to God, He created us, and we are to give Him glory by praising Him and following His laws. We are not here by chance, people, we are God's creation!
Revelation 4:11 (NKJV) "You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created."
And if you are a Christian, not only has God created you, he purchased you from the slave market of sin with his own precious blood.
1 Corinthians 6:20 (NKJV) For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.
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