Sunday School Class: “Creation as Foundational Truth,” Week 11

Section 9:  Genesis as Foundation of Doctrine, continued:
 
Last week, we looked at the Doctrine of God (Theology), the Doctrine of Man (Anthropology), and the Doctrine of Sin (Hamartiology), as seen in Genesis.
 
Doctrine of Salvation (Soteriology)

The Bible teaches that God in His mercy and grace forgives our sin, but only when the penalty is paid by a substitutionary blood sacrifice. This is first seen in the promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). The first actual blood sacrifice was performed by God Himself when He made coats of skin to clothe Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21).

Take away Genesis and we lose this promise that speaks of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan does not want anyone believing this verse (3:15), because it spell his doom and redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ.

If Genesis is a myth, then so is Jesus Christ.

Evolution hinders man from putting faith in Christ. Theistic evolution is simply a sugar-coated version of the same idea and produces the same results.

A number of other doctrines have their foundation in the book of Genesis.  Examples:

Doctrine of Angels (Angelology). It shows us Satan (a fallen angel) in 3:1, and the Cherubim (a type of angel still faithful to God) in 3:24.

Doctrine of Last Things (Eschatology). Future things make no sense without Genesis as a foundation.

Conclusion

All major Christian doctrines have their source, directly or indirectly, in the book of Genesis.

There are those who object to this foundational view of Genesis in that it does not agree with the evolutionary theories of modern-day “science.”

As Bible-believing Christians, we stand in awe of the handiwork of the Creator (the “Potter”) instead of the supposed intellect of the clay. “Woe to him who strives with his Maker! … Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’” … (Isaiah 45:9, NKJV).

Every atheistic evolutionist amounts to a fool in God’s eyes … “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1, NKJV). We ought not to give any credibility to the ramblings of such fools. “They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one” (Psalm 14:3, NKJV).

Section 10:  Quotes from Evolutionists and Other Scientists

Even prominent evolutionists have some very serious doubts about their beliefs. Recommended Reading:  That Their Words May Be Used Against Them - Quotes from Evolutionists Useful for Creationists, Institute for Creation Research, Compiled by Henry M. Morris, 1997.

 

The bold emphasis in these quotes is mine.

Self-proclaimed Marxist and world-renowned Darwinian geneticist Professor Richard Lewontin:  (Italicized words are his.)

 

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism...we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." (Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons,"  The New York Review, January 1997, p. 31)

 

Another evolutionist said the following, and it was an honest statement:

“If living matter is not, then caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces and radiation, how has it come into being?  … I think … that we must … admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.”  (H.S. Lipson, FRS, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution.” Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, 1980, page 138)

Steven J. Gould, who along with Niles Eldredge came up with the idea of "Punctuated Equilibrium" in the early 1970’s, said the following:

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persist as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection, we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study."  (Stephen J. Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, vol. 86, May 1987)

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." (Stephen J. Gould, 1982)

Even though Gould discounted the evidence for Darwin, he still accepted evolution and instead turned to punctuated equilibrium.  Note:  If the evidence is bad, maybe the idea is bad, too. Why not just throw out evolution?

 

"Paleontologists have been insisting that their record is consistent with slow, steady, gradual evolution where I think that privately, they’ve known for over a hundred years that such is not the case." (Niles Eldredge, 1981)

My summary of the ideas of punctuated equilibrium evolutionists:  "We know the evidence for evolution is bogus, but evolution is true; it has to be. We just have to figure out another way for it to have happened, since it couldn’t have happened the way we thought it did, and clearly, God couldn’t have created everything."

From a letter from Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History to creationist Luther D. Sunderland:

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. I will lay it on the line; there is not one such fossil for which one might make a watertight argument. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favored by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

Another quote from Lipson:

"Darwin’s book - Origin of Species - I find quite unsatisfactory:  it says nothing about the origin or species; it is written very tentatively, with a special chapter on 'Difficulties on Theory;' and it includes a great deal of discussion on why evidence for natural selection does not exist in the fossil record. As a scientist, I am not happy with these ideas. But I find it distasteful for scientists to reject a theory because it does not fit in with their preconceived ideas."  (H.S. Lipson, FRS, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK), 'Origins of Species,' in 'Letters,' New Scientist, 5/14/81, page 452)

Charles Darwin wrote the following:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distance, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." (Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species, J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. London, 1971, page 167)

This is a favorite quote of creationists, and evolutionists say we use it out of context by not including what Darwin said next. He goes on to say, "The difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated."

My interpretation:  "I don’t really care how it got started. The eye does exist, so it must have evolved, and any absurdity we think we see is simply not real. Given enough time, it could have happened." That is typical evolutionist nonsense.

Another statement: "The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radio decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such 'confirmation' may be short-lived. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio decay rates are not as constant as previously thought. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man." (Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC, “Secular Catastrophism.” Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, page 21)

"We all jumped at the Origin of Species because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.” (Sir Julian Huxley). They not only express doubts, but they also give away their true motives. Evolution = no God = no one to whom I must answer = no absolute standards = I can do as I please.

"The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology.  But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity - omnipotent chance."  (T. Rosazak, "Unfinished Animal", 1975, p. 101-102)

"If complex organisms ever did evolve from simpler ones, the process took place contrary to the laws of nature, and must have involved what may rightly be termed to be miraculous." (R.E.D. Clark, Victoria Institute , 1943).

"... evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit with it ..." H.S. Lipson. “A Physicist Looks at Evolution." Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, p138, 1980)

From The Humanist Manifesto II:

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new:  the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved.”  (John Dunphy, Humanist Manifesto II)

“Christianity has fought, still fights, and will continue to fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing." (G. Richard Bozarth, “The Meaning of Evolution,” American Atheist, p. 30, February 1978)

 

We should never forget that the real aim of evolution is to remove God from the picture and make man free to do as he pleases.

Evolutionists like to say that the Bible and evolution can be harmonized. Only gullible Christians fall prey to believing such foolishness. Evolutionists absolutely know better. Richard Dawkins, one of the best-known atheists and evolutionists, openly admits that he became an atheist because of his exposure to and acceptance of Darwinism. Other evolutionists are not happy with him for being honest enough to blow their cover, but it is clearly true that evolution and Christianity are in no way compatible.

We need to be aware of Satan’s devices. (2 Cor. 2:11).

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves”  (Matthew 10:16, NKJV). “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, ‘Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us.’  He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The LORD shall hold them in derision. Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure” (Psalm 2:2-5).

 

 

Continued and concluded next week with  "Scientific Evidence for Creation."

 

 

Following are some of the resources, in addition to the Scriptures, that have helped me a great deal as I have studied to teach this Sunday school topic. These include the following:

 

Materials from the Institute for Creation Research, including the book The Genesis Record by Henry M. Morris.

 

Materials from the “Answers in Genesis” website, and the book The Lie: Evolution by Ken Ham.

 

Sermons by John MacArthur from the website, “Grace to You.”

 

Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells, a proponent of the Intelligent Design movement.

 

The “Got Questions?" website.

 

The "creation.com" website, specifically http://creation.com/genesis-the-seedbed-of-all-christian-doctrine.

 

Various other resources, both printed books and websites.