EVOLUTION, The — Religion, Harold Hunt In recent memory we have seen the introduction of a new religion—the religion of evolution. Evolution is a religion—and worships its own god as surely as any other religion does. The very existence of the universe proves there must, of necessity, be a God somewhere. Whoever, or whatever has sufficient power to create a universe, and to keep it going, is God. Either God created nature; or else nature created itself. Either nature is God; or there is a God who created nature. One or the other is God.
The evolution religion
Evolution is clearly a religion; it worships nature. Evolution credits nature with having the same power the Bible attributes to God. It credits nature, and the forces inherent in nature, with having the power to create itself, and in that sense it pays the same homage to nature, that others pay to the God of the Bible.
But then, evolution is not really a new religion; the notion of evolution was the basis of all the old pagan religions. Their various myths were allegories of how man evolved —how he came to be what he now is. Paul was talking about this evolutionary principle at the root of all the pagan religions when he said they, “worshiped and served the creature more than the creator” Rom. 1:25. They paid homage to the creature—creation—and lost sight of the creator. That exactly describes the evolutionist.
In this short article we will not be able to give anything like a full presentation of what evolution is all about, but perhaps, we can show that evolution is religion—not science. Hopefully, we will show that Bible-believing children of God do not need to be intimidated by the evolutionist’s claims, and we do not need to be fooled by his forged evidence.
Were you there?
Evolutionists make their presentations and arguments with confidence that no one can challenge them, but God gave us the best challenge long ago. In Job’s day, God wanted to know, “How do you know so much about it; were you there?” God clearly was there, and he provides all the answers we need.
Job 38:1-4, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding.”
The book of Job is one of the most fascinating of all books. It provides information not found anywhere else. Among other things, it provides an abundance of evidence regarding the creation of the universe. It provides enough evidence to put the evolutionist on the run.
The very first expression in this passage reminds me of a comment a denominational preacher made to me several years ago. We had been having a long running conversation about the way God saves his people. He seemed to think he was getting the short end of the conversation, and he said, “Harold, did you ever wish God would just speak from heaven and say, “Okay, everybody, listen up, I am going to tell you the way it is.”
I said, “What do you think the Bible is?” That is exactly what God does in the Bible. He says, “Okay, listen up,” and then he tells us everything we need to know.
Blowing smoke
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”
Job’s miserable comforters had been giving him all kinds of advice, more advice than he probably wanted. Sometimes they told the truth, and sometimes they didn’t. They did not always know what they were talking about. After awhile, God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, and said, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” Nowadays, we might say they were blowing smoke. They were just confusing the issue.
God said they were darkening counsel by words without knowledge; they did not know what they were talking about. He said, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.” They had been so quick in giving their opinions. God challenged them to talk to him; he would ask the questions. He says, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding.” He wants to know, “Were you there; how do you know so much about it?”
Declining Morals
Our children are being taught in school that they are really the result of a grand accident; they just evolved. It is no coincidence that we are seeing such a moral decline among our people. The morals of Americans are worse every decade than they were the decade before. That is one thing the righteous and the wicked agree on. The righteous and the wicked agree that Americans are steadily becoming more immoral. The difference is that the righteous are grieved over it, and the wicked think it is a good thing. The wicked are glad to see the morals of Americans decline. I have not changed the subject; I will get back to it.
There are any number of causes of the moral decline that is going on in America, but one of the greatest problems is that you cannot tell children all their growing up years they are nothing more than highly evolved animals without expecting that after awhile they are going to start behaving like animals. You can count on it. If you drill it into their heads, that they are simply animals, they will begin to behave like animals.
You cannot, year after year, drill it into people’s heads that God is not their creator without their eventually getting the idea it is none of God’s business how they behave.
When I was in school, evolution was taught as a theory. Today it is taught as a proven fact. Evolution has not been proven; it cannot be proven. But the establishment is determined to have it taught as a proven fact.
The ACLU and freedom of speech
The ACLU has been one of the leaders in this campaign. They call themselves the American Civil Liberties Union, but they are not interested in anybody’s liberties except their own. Just a few weeks ago the ACLU sued the school district in Amite, Louisiana. The school district put a disclaimer in their science books. It said something like this: “We present this material as the scientific theory of evolution. We do not endorse or deny any theory of the origin of matter and energy. We are aware there is more than one theory of the origin of matter. There is the theory of evolution, and the theory of creation, etc. We encourage the student to consider the various theories and make up his own mind.”
The ACLU sued the school district to stop them from telling those students they had the right to consider various theories and make up their own minds. As of this time, that suit is still pending.
What about all that evidence?
But somebody is forever asking, “What about all the evidence the evolutionists have produced.” The fact is there are three kinds of evidence of evolution. There is the evidence that has nothing to do with the question. For instance, the fact there were once great dinosaurs has nothing to do with evolution. That just proves that some creatures have become extinct. We already knew that. There is evidence that has been misunderstood; and there is evidence that has simply been falsified.
I want to notice just a few examples of the evidence that has been deliberately falsified. When you believe God is not your creator, it is easy to conclude it is none of his business what you do, or what you tell. It is easy to get the idea it is alright to falsify the facts to prove your argument. If you are not answerable to God for anything you do, there is nobody to call you to account for your conduct. There is nothing to stop you from forging your evidence.
A seminary drop-out
In 1859, an apostate ministerial student by the name of Charles Darwin wrote a book entitled, The Origin of the Species. It was that book that gave the greatest impetus to the modern version of evolution. There is nothing new about the idea of evolution. The notion of evolution has been around from before the dawn of recorded history. But Darwin gave the greatest emphasis to the modern form of evolutionism in The Origin of the Species. He insisted that all of life evolved from lower life forms, and they had in turn evolved from non-living matter.
But people began to ask him for his evidence. He said the evidence would be found in the fossils. Then they wanted to know, “Where are the fossils?” He did not know.
Falsified evidence
Then in 1912, an English school teacher by the name of Charles Dawson found an old skull in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England. It was the skull of a man, and the jawbone of an ape. They were sure they had found the missing link between humans and animals, the missing link between man and ape. It was part human and part ape, or so they insisted. They put it in their textbooks. It came to be called Piltdown Man, because it was found near Piltdown, England. The story stayed in the textbooks for forty years.
I very well remember the week they discovered it was a fraud. I was a junior in high school in 1953. I read it in one of the news magazines, Time or Newsweek. When it was first discovered, it made front page news all over the world. When it was discovered to be a fraud, it was buried in the back pages of newspapers, and news magazines.
Forty one years later, they finally went back and re-examined the skull. They discovered the skull was not really three hundred thousand years old after all. It was closer to a thousand years old. And the jawbone actually was the jawbone of an ape, but instead of being three hundred thousand years old, it was probably brand new when they discovered it. They also discovered it had been treated with iron pyrites to make it look old, and it had been sanded down with very fine sandpaper to make it fit the skull.
It took the world’s most brilliant scientists forty years to discover it was an out and out forgery. It was a deliberate hoax to prop up a theory that cannot be supported any other way.
Several weeks ago, I waded through a book by an evolution-ary scientist by the name of James Trefil. I like to get both sides of the story. He talked about the Piltdown Hoax. He said he had been to England, and the skull is still on display in a glass case in the British Museum in London. (I wonder why they keep it on display almost fifty years after it has been proven to be a hoax.) He admitted, “The fact the teeth had been filed was pretty clear.” It took the world’s most brilliant scientists forty years to notice those sandpaper marks, which today, after almost fifty years, are still pretty clear.
Even though Mr. Trefil admits the whole thing was a farce, he still tries to defend the perpetrators. He thinks Arthur Conan Doyle (the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries) probably played a trick on the researchers of that day. It is a fact that Arthur Conan Doyle did live at Piltdown, England, but if he fooled those evolutionists, you can be sure they wanted to be fooled. They had already reached their conclusion; they were looking for evidence to support it, and they would accept any help they could get.
It is strange they waited about introducing that notion until Mister Doyle was long since dead, and could not defend himself.
Just a pig’s tooth
Until the late ‘60’s we had a law in Tennessee that made it a crime to teach evolution in the public schools. In 1922, the ACLU was getting ready to challenge that law. They put an advertisement in Tennessee newspapers searching for anybody who was willing to teach evolution in Tennessee schools, and submit to be put on trial. There was a young man by the name of John Scopes, who wrote back and volunteered for the task. They met with him in a drug store in Dayton, Tennessee, and laid their plans. He was brought to trial in 1925, in Dayton Tennessee, in what has become known as the Monkey Trial.
About the time they were preparing for the trial at Dayton, Tennessee, there was a man by the name of Harold Cook, who discovered a fossil tooth in Nebraska. He thought the tooth belonged to an ape man, a kind of in-between creature, not quite human, but not quite an ape either. With nothing more than that tooth to go by, they were able to reconstruct the entire man. They learned that his lips stuck out, kind of like a chimpanzee. He had heavy brow ridges. He walked all bent over, and his knuckles dragged the ground when he walked. They called him Herpero-pithecus haroldcookii. They seem to love those scientific sounding names. Most people called him the Nebraska man.
I like the comment Mark Twain made about that time. He said, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjectures out of such a paltry investment of facts.”
For some reason they did not use Mr. Cook’s tooth in the trial in 1925, but in 1927 they went back to Snake Creek, Nebraska and dug up the rest of the skeleton. It was a pig. Those brilliant scientists couldn’t tell the difference between a tooth of an extinct pig, and the tooth of an ape man. But the story doesn’t stop there. In 1972, a man by the name of Ralph Wenzel discovered the pig wasn’t even extinct. He discovered an entire herd of those same pigs in a rain forest in Paraguay in South America. So much for Hesperopithecus.
He hid the human skulls
One more illustration, there was a Dutch medical doctor by the name of Eugene Dubois, who was a disciple of the German evolutionist Ernst Haekel. He was determined to prove that man evolved from some kind of ape man. He expected he would probably find the fossils in the South Pacific. So in 1891, he joined the Dutch army, as an army surgeon, and had himself assigned to Java, where he could dig and hunt for the fossils of this ape man. He hadn’t been there long until he found what he was looking for. He found the skull and thigh bone of what he said was an ape man. He called it Pithecanthropus erectus. It got in all the textbooks, and stayed there for thirty years.
Thirty years later, when his hoax was about to be exposed, he called people in and admitted he had known all along it was really a gibbon, an ordinary ape. I am sure he did not want to tell it; it proved that his entire career as an evolutionist scientist had been a fraud. But I am told that he was about to die, and he didn’t want to go out into eternity with that lie on his record. He went on to tell that he had also found two human skulls in the same location as the ape skull. It is obvious that man could not have evolved from those apes, if humans lived at the same time, and in the same place, as the apes. He admitted he had kept those skulls hid for thirty years.
You could make a career of studying the out and out forgeries that lie at the very heart of the notion of evolution, but perhaps, those three instances will give some idea of the kind of evidence the theory is based on.
There are only three kinds of evidence for evolution: the kind that has nothing to do with evolution, the kind that has been misunderstood, and the kind that has been forged. Christians do not have to take any abuse from the evolutionists. I cannot understand how, otherwise intelligent, people can believe any such notion.
The oldest book
But back to the book of Job. The book of Job contains internal evidence it is the oldest book in the Bible. I believe it contains evidence, that it was written during what paleontologists call the ice age.
Also there is also an abundance of evidence the book was written during the time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. It provides us with Job’s eyewitness report on the nature and behavior of dinosaurs.
When you tell somebody you do not believe in evolution, he almost always brings up the subject of dinosaurs. He wants to know, “Don’t you believe in dinosaurs?” But what do dinosaurs have to do with evolution? Dinosaur fossils have been discovered all over the earth, and there can be no question that those huge creatures once roamed the earth, but what does that have to do with evolution? Somehow people have the idea that, because they have found the fossils of dinosaurs, they have confirmed evolution; but the fact dinosaurs once existed has nothing to do with evolution.
Dinosaur fossils have been found all over the earth. People have been finding them for hundreds of years, but they started digging them up in earnest a little less than two hundred years ago. But the existence, or non-existence, of dinosaurs has nothing to do with the question of evolution.
No need to be intimidated
Evolutionists examine the fossils of dinosaurs, and other extinct creatures, and they draw some of the most elaborate conclusions. Then they try to intimidate Christians with their theories about what (they pretend) those fossils prove. But let me tell you that Christians do not have to take any abuse from those people. They remind me of something Jerry Clowers used to say. He liked to talk about those people who are “educated beyond their intelligence.” It is hard for me to understand how, otherwise intelligent, people can believe some of the yarns evolutionists spin about fossils and how they came about. My automobile did not evolve; somebody built it. If there had not been somebody to build it, it never would have existed. And you and I did not evolve; we have a Maker, and if we had not had a Maker, we would not have existed.
We do not have to be intimidated by the pretended learning of evolutionists. They dig up a pile of old bones and guess what they mean. Really, they dig up a bunch of old bones and fantasize.
Our man on location
But we do not have to guess. We had one of our men on location. He was there when dinosaurs were still walking around, terrifying people. And he wrote it up. We still have his report. We have his word for word description of two different kinds of dinosaurs. He tells us what those two kinds of dinosaurs were called in his day. He tells us what they looked like, and how they behaved.
We have had his report for over four thousand years, and for all that time the opposition has been hammering away at his testimony, and they cannot disprove it. It is a principle in any trial, that if you cannot dispute the evidence, you impugn the witness; you show that the witness is not credible; he cannot be believed. We have had his testimony for four thousand years; and the opposition cannot do anything with it.
Evolutionists fantasize about long ago ages, when (they tell us) lower life forms were evolving upward. They talk about a long ago time when dinosaurs and other strange creatures roamed the earth. But God has assisted his people by providing us with an eyewitness account, written during that very time. Bear in mind that the dinosaurs did not live some sixty-five million years ago, as the evolutionists would have us to believe, but rather a few thousand years ago. It was during that time this book was written, and it gives us a God-inspired, and God-preserved, record of what it was like.
During the ice age
It seems that Job lived during what paleontologists refer to as the ice age. That is another of the things evolutionists throw at us, when we tell them we do not believe in evolution. They want to know if we do not believe there was an ice age. They tell us there is geological evidence of an ice age, and they assume that if we do not believe in evolution, we must also deny there was ever an ice age. Of course, there was an ice age. There is no evidence there was more than one ice age; but there is an abundance of evidence for one. There is evidence in the huge boulders deposited by the glaciers of that age, and the scars they made in the rocks. There clearly was an ice age, and that is probably when Job lived.
Did you ever notice Job has more references to ice, and snow, and frost, and cold, than any other book in the Bible? People talk about whatever is on their mind. These people talked a lot about cold weather. I believe these people were cold. Is that proof it was written during the ice age? No, that is not enough proof.
But, in the 38th chapter, verse 29, listen to what Job says. “Out of whose womb came the ice?” There is only one conceivable ice formation that could be described by that expression, and that is the slow moving ice of a glacier.
Is that sufficient to prove that Job lived during the ice age? No, but there is more. Listen to the next verse, “The waters are hid as with a stone.” When are the waters hid as with a stone? When they are frozen solid.
That still is not enough, but listen to the next expression, “And the face of the deep is frozen.” The deep is a poetic expression referring to the ocean. We still sometimes refer to the ocean as the deep. Job said, the surface of the deep (the ocean) is frozen. In Job’s day the surface of the ocean was frozen.
Cave Men
Also, Job lived during a time when some people lived in caves, and we might properly call them cave men. There never has been any such thing as an ape man, half ape and half man, but from time there have been cave men, people, who, for whatever the reason, lived in caves. Some of them were Job’s neighbors.
They were just as human as you and I are. But they behaved like animals, and the people treated them like animals. Job had such a low opinion of them, that he said, he wouldn’t even let their fathers take care of his dogs Job 30:1. They were too sorry to put out a crop, they dug up roots and chewed on them rather than raise anything. You could hear them off out in the bushes braying like animals. If they came around civilized people, they treated them like animals and ran them off. If they don’t like what you said, and if they were close enough, they might spit in your face. They were a very uncouth sort of people.
In chapter 30, Job says, “But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.” He said he wouldn’t even let their fathers take care of his dogs.” Verse 4, “Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots for their meat.” They would not put out a crop; they had rather dig up roots, and chew on them. Verse 5, “They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as after a thief).” When they came around civilized people, they ran them off like a thief. He goes on, “to dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth.” People have found their drawings in caves. Verse 7, “Among the bushes they brayed.” You could hear them off in the bushes, making all sorts of strange noises. “Under the nettles they were gathered together. They were children of fools, yea, children of base men, they were viler than the earth. And now am I their song, yea, I am their byword. They abhor me, they flee far from me, and spare not to spit in my face.” They were just a human as anybody else, but they acted like animals until people treated them like animals.
Before Moses’ day
In the book of Job, God provides a written record of a long running conversation between Job and his friends. These were fairly well informed people. They had a lot of things wrong, but it is obvious they were thinking people. And the book of Job allows us to know what people believed, what they thought, and what they knew, four thousand years ago.
The book of Job was probably written somewhere between the time of Abraham and the time of Moses. The reason I am convinced it was written prior to Moses’ day is that, first off, these were widely read men. They spent most of their time discussing moral, ethical, and religious questions, and they never once quoted Moses. As well informed as these men were, if the law of Moses had been around, these men would have quoted it; they didn’t. They lived and died before Moses’ day.
I believe it was written after Abraham’s day. Notice that Job lived in the land of Uz. In the years after the flood the descendants of Noah spread out into the vast empty places of the earth. They and their descendants repopulated their respective areas. The various regions came to be called by the name of the man who was the ancestor of most of the people who lived in that area. We are told, “They call their lands after their own name, Psa 49:11”
Job lived in the land of Uz; it was the area settled by Uz. If you want to look it up, you will discover that Uz was Abraham’s nephew Gen. 22:20,21. There is another character in the book of Job named Elihu. “Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite,” Job 32:2. Notice that Elihu was a Buzite. He was descended from Buz. Buz and Uz (or Huz) were brothers. So Elihu and Job were descended from Uz and Buz, Abraham’s nephews. That seems to indicate the book was written sometime after Abraham’s day.
Also, you will remember that after the flood, the life spans dropped almost steadily every generation. Before the flood, it was common for people to live to be almost a thousand years old. Most of the people listed in Genesis chapter eleven died somewhat younger than their fathers did. Noah lived 950 years, but his son Shem only lived to be 600 (Gen. 11:10,11) Moses lived to be 120; his father Amram, lived to be 137; his grandfather Kohath lived to be 133; Levi lived to be 137; Jacob lived to be 147. Their life expectancy declined steadily. Job lived to be 140, about as long as Jacob did. If that is an indicator, and I believe it is, then Job lived along about the time of Jacob.
When dinosaurs still roamed the earth
But to get back to our original premise, Job lived when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. In spite of all the protests to the contrary, dinosaurs were still around four thousand years ago. Job talked about them.
Somebody might say, “Now, Harold Hunt, I have read my Bible through five times, or, maybe, ten times, and the word dinosaur is not in the Bible.” That is right; it is not. I will tell you why it is not. First off, our King James Version of the Bible was translated in 1611. The word dinosaur did not come into existence until the year 1841.
There was an English scientist by the name of Richard Owen, who was the world’s foremost expert on comparative anatomy. In 1841, in a scientific paper Owen was delivering before the Royal Academy of Science in London,
England, he talked about dinosaur fossils, and he was the first to call them dinosaurs. He coined the word. He got the word from the Greek word deinos (terrible) and sauros (lizard)—terrible lizard. They have been called dinosaurs ever since.
They called them dragons
What were they called before that day? They were sometimes called dragons. In the Bible they are sometimes called leviathan or behemoth.
Evolutionists claim dragons are a myth; they never existed. But they dig up their fossils, put them together, and call them dinosaurs. Have you ever looked at pictures of dragons. Don’t they look like skinny dinosaurs? Sure they do.
If there never were any such thing as dragons, why is it that, all over the earth, there have been ancient cultures who have believed there were? People have been digging up dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years, but, until Richard Owen renamed them, they were usually called dragons.
One kind of dinosaur
In Job chapter 40, Job talks about one kind of dinosaur; he calls it behemoth. “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar.” Job 40:15-17.
The Bible is inspired of God. There are no mistakes in the Bible; you can depend on every word. But God did not inspire the center column references. Publishers included them for our convenience. Sometimes they are right, and sometimes they are wrong; but they are never inspired. The center column reference in my Bible says behemoth was an elephant. But the text says behemoth “moveth his tail like a cedar.” An elephant does not have a tail like a cedar tree; an elephant’s tail is more like a rope.
I never saw a dinosaur, but I have seen their fossils. You may have been to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. and walked around that huge dinosaur skeleton. It does have a tail like a cedar tree. Behemoth was one kind of dinosaur that lived in Job’s neighborhood.
Job goes on to say, “His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron,” verse 18. And in verse 23, “Behold he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not; he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth.” So much for behemoth.
A lot like Tyrannosaurus Rex
In the next chapter he talks about leviathan. “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?” The center column in my Bible says that is a whale. But Job throws out the challenge; “Can you draw out leviathan (a whale?) with a hook? “Canst thou put a hook into his nose? Or bore his jaw through with a thorn?” (Verse 2). Verse 7, “Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears?”
Why, sure you can do that to a whale. That is the way they were harvested, before the environmentalists put a stop to it. They would go after them with harpoons with a barb (a hook) on the end.
He says, “Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more. Behold the hope of him is in vain; shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? None is so fierce that dare stir him up,” Job 41:8-10. People are not so afraid as that of whales. But if I came up on a Tyrannosaurus Rex, I would do exactly what Job said, wouldn’t you. I would give him plenty of room. When Job came across leviathan that is exactly what he did. He did not dare to stir him up.
In verse 14, “Who can open the doors of his face? His teeth are terrible round about.” Whales don’t have that kind of teeth. But paleontologists have been digging up dinosaur teeth, and that does describe their teeth. Job said, “His scales are his pride.” Does a whale have scales? No, but this creature did. “His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. One is so near to another, that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered. By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.” Job 41:15-21.
If you mention that to an evolutionist, he will just smile and tell you that dinosaurs couldn’t breathe fire. But we know very little about what dinosaurs could do. About the only thing we really know is the shape of their bones.
All those dragon myths
We do know that during the 15th and 16th centuries, when the European explorers began their great voyages of discovery, no matter where they went, they found ancient cultures, who had legends of fire breathing dragons. If there never was any such thing, how is it those primitive cultures—who had no contact with each other—all believed there was a time when there used to be fire breathing dragons? Where did the idea come from?
The bombardier beetle
In San Diego, California, there is an organization of scientists called the Institute for Creation Research. They have published several articles about a beetle called the bombardier beetle. This little insect has two tiny chambers in his abdomen. One of them is filled with hydrogen peroxide, and the other is filled with enzymes, and something called quinones. Those tiny little chambers have plumbing that runs down to a mixing chamber. When a predator gets after the bombardier beetle, he swings his little behind around in the direction of the predator; he empties those two chambers into the mixing chamber, and in an instant the quinones and hydrogen peroxide turn into hydroquinones at 212 degrees Fahrenheit . He sprays it in the face of whatever is after him, and that takes care of his adversary.
We don’t know all the dinosaurs could do, but we do know there have been dinosaurs discovered with exactly the same plumbing in their heads the bombardier beetle has in his abdomen. We don’t know for sure what those chambers were for, but it looks mighty suspicious to me. We also know there are some substances that burn if they are simply brought together. There are other substances that burst into flames if they are exposed to air. There is no reason to doubt there were some dinosaurs that could breathe fire.
Bear in mind that we are not looking at bones and guessing, and we are not falsifying an unprovable theory. We had our man on the scene. We have his eyewitness report. The opposition has been hammering away at it for four thousand years and they cannot disprove it. “Yea, let God be true.”
The Majesty of the Book
Anybody can guess, but to those who take him at his word, God provides the authoritative answer. We are told, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” Gen. 1:1. An old philosopher made the observation that that verse, the very first verse in the Bible, approaches the sublime. The philosopher got it almost right. That verse does not approach the sublime; it is sublime.
I sit and read this book, and I tremble at the majesty of it. I stand amazed at the majesty of the language of this book, the majesty of its expressions, its symbols, its metaphors.
“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord hath spoken,” Isa. 1:2. What other book would dare use such language? It would be ludicrous in any other book, than this one book written by God himself.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” I suppose I preach on that text as often as I do any text in the Bible. And I expect I will preach on it more often in the future, than I ever have in the past.
It doesn’t bother me near as much as it used to, that I preach on some texts over and over. For one thing, I learned long ago that I am not bright enough to come up with a new text, and a new subject, every time I go into the pulpit.
For another, I believe there are some subjects, and some passages, that need to be preached on over and over . This verse is one of them.
For a long time now, we have been told that we are all an accident. We just somehow evolved. Millions of years ago, our ancestors started out as a little, tiny something on the order of an amoeba. Then, they evolved into something more like a salamander. Before long, they crawled out on dry land and turned into monkeys. Finally, our distant ancestors became what we are now. Just look how far we have come, and can you imagine what we are going to be in ages to come?
The dark side of evolution
It seems that I remember somebody else preaching that same doctrine long before Charles Darwin ever saw the light of day. That ancient evolutionist promised his students, “Ye shall be as gods,” Gen. 3:5. When Charles Darwin published his Origin of the Species in 1859, he just gave a little more information on how we were supposed to go about becoming gods..
Just as a side note, you might be interested to know that the original title of that book was The ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES and the Preservation of the Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin, Nietzsche, and those other early evolutionists believed the lighter races were so much more highly evolved than the darker races, and the darker races so poorly evolved that the darker races were still closer to animals than they were to humans. Darwin and his friends went on to teach that the darker races were so different to full humans, that the darker races ought not be allowed to reproduce. Later, they taught that the darker races ought not be allowed to survive. They ought to be exterminated to make room for the superior races.
Adolph Hitler was an ardent admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin. That aspect of the evolution doctrine became virtually the state religion of Germany during the 1930’s and early ‘40’s. Ideas do have consequences. Nazism is what evolution becomes when it is made into state policy.
Life did not evolve from any lower form of life, but you can be sure the doctrine of evolution has evolved. That aspect of the doctrine has had to be laid aside. Darwin is virtually worshiped as the Messiah of evolution, but nobody would dare teach Darwin’s form of evolution in the schools of today. That doctrine has evolved, but it has not disappeared, by any means. It has simply adapted itself to the times.
One grand accident
We are told we are part of a grand accident. We evolved. We might have evolved into horses, or birds, or roach bugs. As it happened, we evolved into human beings.
In school, our little ones are taught that doctrine over and over, and it is drilled into our own minds on such a daily basis, that it, sometimes, becomes a part of our own thinking, without our realizing it. It creeps into our language almost undetected. If we are not mighty careful we will find ourselves using expressions such as, “Man is the only animal that…….” That is pure evolution, and yet it is a rare person who has never used the expression —usually without realizing what he has said. That doctrine is like water dripping on a rock; it has its effect even on those who are the most sound in the faith.
In its very first verse, the Bible comes directly to the point. It sweeps that doctrine aside. Where did this universe come from? God created it. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
In the first chapter, God refutes the doctrine, and in the third chapter, he tells us where the doctrine of evolution came from, and who its first advocate was.
In the beginning God
Sometimes I like to preach on just the first four words of that verse: “In the beginning God.” I am not really fond of the word theology. That sounds too much like biology, and zoology, and paleontology. It makes it sound as if Bible truth is simply another of man’s …ologies. I prefer the simple expression Bible truth. No doubt, that is just another of my prejudices. We all have our prejudices, and that is one of mine.
But if you don’t mind the word, I will tell you there is an entire system of theology in those four words —in the beginning God.
When you come to think about it, that sums up our entire system of doctrine doesn’t it? God gave the entire system in just four words. I wrestle with a subject for an hour, and, sometimes, never get much of anything said.
God says it all in four words. The rest of the Bible is commentary. The rest of the Bible explains those four words—in the beginning God.
In the beginning of what? In the beginning of everything that had a beginning. Not everything had a beginning. God did not have a beginning. Rather, he is the beginning. He always has been. He always will be. He is the eternal one. Everything is one eternal now with him. In the beginning of the natural creation there was God.
In the beginning of the spiritual creation, there is God. All the time I was growing up, I was told, “God wants to save you; he is trying to save you; he is doing the best he can to save everybody. He would save a lot more if he could just get better financed, if he could get better organized, if he could get more assistance. If we would just pitch in and help him, he would save more people than he ever has.”
The first step
And then there was always that old challenge, “God wants to save you, but you will have to take the first step.” I am sure you have heard that one. God knew somebody would come along with that notion long before anybody ever thought of it, and he nipped that doctrine in the bud before it got started.
Does man have to take the first step? No, no, no, a thousand times, no. The very first verse in the Bible tells us it is, “In the beginning God.” That first step notion was the first false doctrine God dealt with.
So far as our home in eternal heaven is concerned, he takes the first step, the last step, and all the steps in between.
In the prophecy of Isaiah, he tells us, “I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the people there was none with me,” Isa. 63:3. I have no idea how many steps it takes to tread a winepress, but no matter how many steps that is, he took them all—there was nobody with him.
He is the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. I don’t know what somebody else may think, but to me that sounds like he is all of it.
He stood on nothing
I like an expression I borrowed from a godly, old black preacher out in Texas. The good brother tells it right most of the time. Some of you have heard his tapes; we have passed them around often enough. He said, “God stood on nothing, because there was nothing to stand on. He reached out into nowhere, because there was nowhere to reach. And he laid his hand on nothing, because there was nothing to lay his hand on. And he took nothing, and out of that nothing he made everything there is.” I get very nearly on shouting ground every time I hear that old brother come over that.
If evolutionists can look at the majesty of this universe, and believe it’s just an accident, I am not going to say they are a bunch of idiots, but they must think we are, if they think God’s prayerful, obedient children are going to swallow that doctrine.
The atheist’s syndrome
There are probably more people, nowadays, claiming to be atheists than there ever have been in the history of the world. I am not sure whether there are any real atheists. There is an old saying, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” Even an atheist prays, when he is in immediate danger. He may insist he is an atheist five minutes before, and five minutes after; but when he is facing immediate danger, it is very likely he will pray.
Somebody wrote a book recently entitled The Atheist’s Syndrome. At least, to the best of my memory, that was the title. I did not read the entire book, but I did read enough to get the gist of it. The contention of the book was that there is a clear connection between atheism and insanity. He argued that no truly sane person can be an atheist—other than on a superficial level. He argued that any truly sane person who thinks he is an atheist believes that way, only because he has never taken the time to think it through.
I think he was probably right. I don’t see how any sane person could ever look at this universe and imagine it is all an accident.
If by atheist, you mean somebody who believes there is no god of any kind anywhere in the world, by definition, there are not, and cannot be, any true atheists.
There are simply people who believe in a different kind of god than you and I do. The universe itself prevents any sane person from being an atheist. This universe is very nearly infinite, very nearly boundless. It is not infinite; only God is infinite, but the universe is very nearly so. It reflects infinite wisdom in the design and construction of it. It reflects infinite power in the construction and preservation of it.
Pantheism
You can be sure that whatever has infinite wisdom, whatever has infinite power, whatever is eternal, is God. If the universe created itself, and that is what the evolutionists want us to believe, then the universe must have infinite wisdom and power. And if that is true, the universe must be God. That doctrine is called pantheism. That is the generic name for the old pagan religion called Gaia. That was the doctrine Paul was talking about, when he referred to those who “worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator,” Rom. 1:25. They could not tell the difference between the Creator and his creation. But that doctrine is not true; God is the one and only Creator.
The universe came about somehow. Either God created it, or somebody else created it, or it is eternal—it created itself. Those are the only three options available. The evolutionist believes the universe was produced by the properties, and energies, and forces, inherent in the universe.
That is, they believe the universe produced itself. Bear in mind that whoever, or whatever, produced the universe, of necessity, had to have infinite power and wisdom. If the universe was produced by the properties, energies, and forces inherent in the universe, those properties, energies, and forces must, of necessity, have infinite power and wisdom.
The creative power of rocks and dirt
So the evolutionist attributes the universe, the very earth under our feet, with having virtually infinite power, and wisdom. Bear in mind that the earth is made up of a little water, but mostly rock and dirt. And it is this earth the evolutionist would have us believe evolved itself into all we see around us today. They believe the earth, and all the rest of the universe, for that matter, created itself.
Now we are getting to the real difference between the Bible-believing child of God and the evolutionist. The Bible-believing child of God believes in the almighty, creative power of God. The evolutionist believes in the almighty creative power of rocks and dirt. And they have the audacity to call us fanatics.
The ecology
We hear a lot about the ecology, nowadays. Environmen-talists have ever so much to say about how the ecology is so perfectly in balance, how every aspect of the ecology has its own particular place, its own little niche to fill. They tell us if we get the ecology out of balance—if something is removed from its place—it just messes up the entire scheme of things.
I wonder who they think put the ecology in such balance in the first place? Who put our own bodies in such balance, that if some little part of it gets out of balance we are in so much trouble?
I had a friend several years ago, who died because the copper in his system got out of balance. I never hear much about copper in our system. I hear a lot about iron deficiency, and other kinds of deficiencies, but I rarely hear about copper deficiency. But somehow or other, the very tiny amount of copper in his system got out of balance, and it killed him.
God put these bodies of ours in balance when he created Adam. But the evolutionist would have us believe it is just an accident that every trace element in our system happens to be perfectly balanced with every other trace element.
The blindness of the human heart
God has given us all kinds of evidence of what he has done. The very complexity of the universe is its own evidence.
One of the grandest proofs of the depravity and blindness of the human heart is the fact that scientific men are no more religious than most of them are. Scientists ought to be the most religious people walking this planet.
Studying the wonders of the universe as they do, why do more of them not believe in the power and the majesty of God? Why is that? It is because of the blindness of the human heart.
Note: Over the years most of the world’s greatest scientists were firmly committed to the fact that God created the universe. A list of those scientists is like a who’s who in the history of modern science. But the last three or four generations have seen the notion of evolution capturing most of the scientific community. We are seeing some reversal in that trend. In recent years more and more of the ablest scientists have become outspoken in defense of creationism. Perhaps, the leading organization of creationist scientists is a group called Answers in Genesis, headed up by Ken Hamm. They have assembled a wide range of literature dealing with creation and evolution. The material ranges from the very simplest children’s picture and coloring books to very technical monographs written primarily for the scientific community. Regardless of your level of expertise, they can provide you with more than enough information. They can be reached at Answers in Genesis, P. O. Box 6330, Florence KY 41022, or 1-800-350-3232, or www.AnswersinGenesis.org.