Auto-generated - may contain small errors. Always verify with the audio version.
Before, most of you know him. If you are a visitor, you'll get to know him this morning.! And I'm sure you are aware from the announcement of the subject that his subject matter is not easy.
I'm sure he'll have more to say about that. We thought of setting up the screen and the overhead projector. He could do that, but you folks are smart and you have a paper and pencil, and if you don't, you better get it out. And this is an informal class and we want you to be interested in what he has to say this morning. Brother Greer, we're happy to have you here. We're going to finish our offering, but you go ahead and start because the time is yours. It's nice to be with you this morning, and I'd like to add my little word of thanks. I too have a Christian dad who was 80 years old yesterday, pastored a GRB Baptist church in New York City, the same church for 46 years of ministry and retired two years ago. So I have a rich heritage in the things of the Lord. As far as my home is concerned, and on Father's Day, I would surely acknowledge my great thanksgiving to God, not only for the kind of dad he was, but for the quality of the spiritual life he guided me into. This morning, our subject is origins. The question of origins is a question that everyone has to face. It's impossible to be a thinking person and not ask the question about the origin of life and not ask the question about how life has developed. We live in a day and age in which many answers have been given to the problem of origins. There's one word in philosophy and in science that has permeated thinking since approximately the 17th century and that word is process. Process has become the key concept to explain everything as far as development is concerned. It's not just a word that has been used in the biological sciences.
It is a word that is used in the historical sciences, the sociological sciences. Almost in every facet of learning today, we move with this idea that a long time ago things were simple and as time progressed and process went on, simple things became complex. Man started out having very few social relationships.
He started out in caves struggling against his environment. As man developed, as he learned to overcome his environment, family life was established, other institutions of society were established, and therefore the sociological matrix that we live in today has come through time by process.
Of course, this philosophical idea has been at the heart of Western philosophy since the sixth century BC. It's an idea that only lately has been applied to biology and to life science. Those of us who believe perhaps that Darwin was the man who came up with the idea of evolution would make a very bad mistake.
That idea has been a constant permeating idea in Western thought. Darwin simply took that idea and applied it to life sciences. I want to expose you first of all this morning before I go to the content of scripture to what I would consider to be the reigning answer of contemporary science to the problem of origin and the problem of development of life.
The present viewpoint runs something like this. Hundreds of millions of years ago, in the primordial oceans, under just the right conditions, the right conditions, and during an electrical storm, some chemical synthesis took place that produced low yield amino acids.
Now, amino acids, ladies and gentlemen, are the building blocks of all life forms in our world. A man by the name of Miller did these experiments down in Florida about 12 years ago. He got a vat, and into his vat, and into his vat he put some ammonia, he put some methane, some hydrogen, and some water. And he closed this vat, and he put a vacuum system on the vat, and he sparked the vat with electrical current, and when he would spark that vat, he would get some low yield amino acids there in the midst of that vat.
And science speculated that during thunderstorm activity with hydrogen, water, methane, and ammonia present, and under the sparking activity of the electrical storm, low yield amino acids were formed, and they began to float on the surface of the waters.
Now, amino acids, of course, are not living cells, and they are not self-replicating, and they are not life. Something has to transpire with these amino acids before you will ever get any kind of life forms.
Now, a second scientist, about 10 years ago by the name of Fox, took some of those low yield amino acids, and he put them in a beaker, and he held them close to a flame.
And he found some very interesting things transpire when he heated amino acids. He found that those amino acids began to pop together. Did you ever see your children play with pop beats?
And formed what science has called a protonoid, or a protein life chain. This is still sub-life, but he did get that to transpire.
It is not self-replicating. It does not meet the definition of biological life. But it did show how the possibility of those amino acids on the primordial oceans might stick together and might be able to bring about some sort of protein life.
Now, it's easy to speculate. All you've got to do is add some heat to that early speculation. So you've got a primordial ocean with methane, hydrogen, water, and ammonia present.
You've got an electrical storm, and you've got to be close to a heat source. So science has speculated that this took place close to volcanic activity, so that the water in that area was quite warm, which caused these amino acids to kind of pop together.
And from these early yield amino acids by natural process, life forms as we know them today have developed. Now, of course, science wants time.
They've got to have vast time to explain how we can get the complexity of life forms that we find in our world today. So that science's answer to the problem of the origin of life is basically random circumstances with particular materials present under just the right conditions, and by chance, the protein, chemical, life substance was formed, somehow developed the capacity for self-replication, and from those simple organisms, those pre-life to life, and finally from simple to the most complex living forms, everything has developed from that process or in that process to what we know today.
Now, the development process is known in science by a big word. It's the word uniformitarianism. You see the word uniform in there. This word simply means that science asserts that the processes by which nature operate are uniform in character.
The processes we find in nature today have always existed in nature. And therefore, looking at present process, using present process plus time, we can explain how everything has developed.
Now, that's the key. In fact, those are the two keys to the understanding of the contemporary scientific viewpoint about origins. Vast time in the past, under random chance conditions, protein life forms developed, then by the present processes that we're able to observe in science today, with the use of those processes and those processes alone, there has been in vast time the development from simple to complex.
You can see what this asserts about human life. It simply asserts that human life has come about as a consequence of randomness or chance.
That there was possibility that it might never have come about, and by randomness, atoms were formed and random collocations came together. There was no benevolent, wise God who created with a purpose.
Chance was operating at that primordial level. And if chance was operating, then man indeed, as a creature, has come wholly by chance. He was not purposed. He had no goal.
There was no purpose or direction to his life. He has come out of the strange randomness of the past. And man is just a possible creature who has sprung up as a consequence of chance operating forces.
And thus, when man comes to maturity, man will not be able to find purpose in life, and man will finally be his own God. Because there was no God who purposed him, and there was no God who indeed defines who he is and what he is to do.
And this is what we find today, is it not? We find men today living with a basic viewpoint that says, origins are explained by chance and development is explained by present process.
Now, if man is a creature of chance, why should I talk to man about a moral judgment at the end of history before a righteous God? If man is the product of chance, why should I talk about moral absolutes and values that must guide man in life and decision making?
Why isn't every man free to choose his own morals, free to choose his own values? Why isn't every man, if he's a product of chance, why isn't he free to do anything he wishes, and why should he ever be bothered with religion or any kind of moral principle?
And of course, we have seen this and undate our culture. We've had this thing taught in public education for 25 to 30 years now, and the end product of it has finally grown up in our culture, and we wonder what's happened to us.
Right this morning, I'd like not to spend my time with the scientific and the philosophical. I'd like to give the bulk of my time to answering the question of origins from a biblical perspective. It's interesting to note that in 2 Peter chapter 3, the apostle Peter indicated that in the last days, scoffers were going to come, who are going to walk after their own desires, and their basic premise was going to be this question, where is the promise of his coming?
For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. Peter says in the last days, people are going to say, why should I worry about Jesus Christ coming back in history for moral judgment?
Because nothing like that has ever happened in the past, and the processes of nature have remained constant ever since creation. And Peter says, of this they willingly receive amnesia.
They choose to be ignorant of this very thing, that the heavens of old and the earth, standing out of the water and amidst the water, being overflowed with water, never perished.
Peter says that the thing that the uniformitarian scientist refuses to acknowledge is the fact that God has acted in history, and God's acts in history have changed the processes in nature.
So I want to suggest to you this morning that the key to origins is to be found within the framework of scripture. I have just finished some graduate work in writing a thesis in the early chapters of the book of Genesis, in which I have sought indeed to argue that Genesis 1 through 3 is not constituted as Hebrew poetry, it is not constituted as mythology or symbolic representation, but its intent, as far as Moses was concerned, was to record trustworthy history.
I'm going to make an assertion to you, ladies and gentlemen, one that I believe is absolutely essential for us all to face. If Genesis 1, 2, and 3 cannot be trusted, when it comes to its clear statement on origins, then you will never know if you can trust John 3, 16 with its clear statement on salvation.
For you do not cut this book up into pieces and take the little piece of pie that you like. I want to tell you, if any of this book is suspect, all of it's suspect.
And is it not interesting today that man wishes to sit and judge which part of the word of God is acceptable to the contemporary mind?
The salvation pie which promises fire insurance against hell and eternal bliss and happiness in heaven is very acceptable to the 20th century man.
But a clear statement about a recent creation in six days which stands in direct contradiction to the contemporary intellectual scientific viewpoint of our age, all of a sudden the believer backs off of that and we've got all kinds of weird interpretations of Genesis.
I want to suggest to you this morning a model. I want to say it's not a model based upon dispensations. I'm not interested in trying to revise the dispensational chart for you.
But I do want to suggest to you that there's a way to divide biblical history that will help us understand this problem of origins and this problem of development of life.
And the model I wish to use is the model of judgment. I would like you to be able to think in a number of time periods discreet in character. I would like to suggest to you that Genesis 1 begins with that first biblical world as it came from the hand of God.
That world was characterized by certain things. That world was declared by God to be perfect and man was rightly related in every facet of his life.
But something happened in that world that brought change. And what happened was man sinned against God and as a consequence of man's sin, in Genesis 3 we find God brings judgment into his world and judgment changes things.
Then you go to the world from the time of the fall or the curse in the Garden of Eden and you go up to the time of the flood of Noah. And in this second time period, certain things were characteristic of life in our world.
Certain particular things could describe life in that world from the Edenic curse to the flood of Noah. A time period of approximately 1,656 years.
At the end of that time period, God brought a catastrophic judgment and that catastrophic judgment has tremendous implications for science and for scientific process. So the judgment again brings change in creation.
There was change in the curse in the Garden. There was change at the flood. There's going to come another drastic change in the relationships of nature when Jesus Christ returns in glory to establish his kingdom and to establish his thousand-year reign on this earth.
Now, we don't have time this morning to work this model all the way through. We have the judgment of the Edenic curse. We have the judgment of the flood. Right after that one, there's another one that's fascinating and that's the judgment of the confusion of tongues or the Tower of Babel.
But we live in the time period of the post-flood world. The next major catastrophic event that's going to change process in nature is going to be the revelation of Jesus Christ for the establishment of his kingdom.
And at that time, there will be new operative principles transpiring in nature. For that thousand years, these principles will operate. Then at the end of that time period, there's going to be a final and a fourth judgment, a judgment by fire, in which God is going to totally renovate the heavens and the earth which are now, and he's going to bring about new heavens and new earth.
Now, I want to suggest to you that these four judgments will enable us to have a key to see how life has developed and what changes have come within the framework of the created world.
In other words, I'm suggesting to you this morning that as a creationist, I do not hold in a static creation. I do not believe that the world I live in today is exactly the same world with the same processes that God created back in Genesis chapter 1.
And we need to be very sure we understand that. The evolutionist says that the creationist, the Bible believer, holds to a static world in which nothing changes.
I do not hold to that. The Bible will not allow me to hold that. There has been change in creation. It hasn't been a change from simple to complex between species and phyla and all the breakdown of the animal kingdom.
It hasn't been a change of progress from a single life source to the vast complexity of life forms that we find today. But neither has it been a static world because God has acted in this world and God has brought change in this world.
It isn't enough to say this morning that we reject evolution and we accept the Bible. It isn't enough to know what you don't believe. You must know positively what you do believe.
It isn't enough to say, no, I can't accept any forms of organic evolution. It seems to me we must place there a positive biblical answer to the problem of development.
I'm not going to spend much time with the concept of origin because I'm sure we are all committed to the basic principle that the origin of life has come as a consequence of the special creative activity of God.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth did not have any boundaries and the earth was empty and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God moved over the waters and God said, let there be light and there was light and God divided the light from the darkness and the light he called day and the darkness he called night.
Right on down through verse 26 of chapter 1, we have that full delineation of the direct creative fiat of God where he created, we commonly say, ex nihilo.
That means he created into nothing. God spoke and he brought into existence those things which were a part of his plan and his purpose and therefore the origin of our world, the origin of our universe, the origin of our life forms are in the creative fiat of God whereby he brought to pass his purpose when indeed he had chosen to bring about a creation.
Now you want to think a staggering thought. Why did God create? Was he lonely? Free person, sharing a common essence and absolute harmony and fellowship?
Did he have a need? Was he deficient? Was there a part of him that was incomplete and he had to take steps to complete it? I hope not. He's an absolutely self-sufficient God.
Why did he create? There's only one answer to that question, because he chose to. You say, well, why did he choose to do it? And I ask you a question then. What is there that's antecedent to the will of God?
Do you know of anything? Then don't ask dumb questions. If the will of God has no antecedent, then don't ask why about it, huh? Well, there is no other place to go.
When you say, he chose to, and you say, why did he choose to? What would you like to find? Well, he wasn't incomplete. He didn't have to create. Creation is an activity of God that comes from his free choice and his free purpose, and God, for purposes known to himself, determined in eternity past to create, and then actually did the creating.
Now, my own view of Genesis 1 very simply is this. God created in six consecutive literal days. I do not accept the gap theory, and if you do, I respect that.
I'm not going to take time to argue the viewpoint this morning. I just simply want to assert to you that I believe that exegetically the best way to handle Genesis 1 is to see six consecutive days of creative activity by God, and it wasn't because God got tired and he had to rest up so he'd have enough energy for the next day because God was doing this in order to establish a model which would become the pattern of life for his image bearer, Genesis 20, clearly tells us.
By the way, Genesis 20, 11 seems to me to be an overwhelmingly difficult view for the gap theory to work with, and that's this. In six days, Jehovah made the heavens and the earth.
What does Genesis 1, 1 say? In the beginning, God created what? The heavens and the earth. And Moses says in Exodus 20, 11, In six days, Jehovah made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them is.
So I suggest to you that as far as origins are concerned, we hold to special creation, we hold to direct divine activity, we hold to the creative breath of God operating at creation.
Now don't answer too quickly, for I don't want to embarrass you on Father's Day, but who created? Who is the creator? Christ. Please learn that.
John 1. Creation is a Christocentric activity of God. He is the creator. I think very often we view the father as the creator.
I think what we need to see is that creation is a revelation of God. Christ is the Logos. Without him was not anything made that was made. And everything made came through him, and he is the one active in creation.
Now you're going to get intellectual indigestion now because I'm going to pour a great bulk of material to you in about ten minutes about that creation. Okay? When God created, certain things were true about that creation.
Certain characteristics described it. Characteristics, some of which we have in our world today, others that we do not have in our world today. The first thing that God created was life, right?
It's interesting, that was created on day one, but the sun wasn't created until day four. So in the biblical view, life precedes the sun. And it's interesting if you read the book of Revelation, light is going to be after the sun as well because in the new heaven and new earth, there is no need of sun for the Lamb is the light of it.
So you have the light-darkness boundary, and we have light-darkness today, don't we? We have that same boundary that God created at the beginning, and we have that boundary, and that boundary has been a constant.
The second thing God created was a firmament, and the purpose of the firmament was to divide water from water, and the firmament was called heaven, and God had water above the firmament, a water canopy above the firmament, and then he had water on the earth.
Now, we do not have a water canopy above our firmament, do we? May I suggest some things to you? You go back and read it. God created a firmament which divided water from water.
With a water canopy above our present atmospheric heavens, we would have a wholly different climate factor governing our earth. water. There would be no poles, no polar ice caps.
There would be absolutely a temperate climate over the face of the entire earth. There would be no vast ice areas unable to support life and covered with a very thick ice cap.
If indeed in our world there was water above the firmament as it was at the time of creation, the quality and climate of life would be very different. While that water was up there before the flood, people lived very long lives didn't they?
And right after the flood, lifespan went smooth. That water canopy no doubt acted as a filter that handled some of the cosmic radiation and also the x-ray of the sun.
Now we know today that the x-ray is very much a part of the aging process for life in our world. You ladies who love to eye out in the sun and get all sun tan, aren't helping yourself and particularly as far as aging is concerned for you know what it does to your skin.
Well, we had longevity of life in that time period. There was probably a temperate climate. The water was over the face of the entire earth and the third thing God did was he said let the waters be gathered together into 17 oceans, right?
Now what does it say? Let the waters be gathered together into how many places? one place. I suggest to you that the world as it came from the hand of God was not 70% drowned with water as our world is today.
I suggest to you when you read Genesis 1 carefully you find that the sea or the water was gathered together into one place and there was a very large contiguous landmass not divided by vast oceans as we find in our world today.
That the landmass was probably contiguous that is it was all joined together and there was one large body of water in which God had caused the water that covered the entire earth to be gathered together and the dry land to appear.
When you go to the book of Revelation and you read about the new heaven and the new earth the first thing John saw was that there was no more sea. Remember that? The new earth when it comes from the hand of God is going to be oceanless.
You can look at the present world and say the world has always been like this it's always been 73% of our earth is ground with water and it will always be that way because of the relationship of water to earth and the climate factors and the polar ice caps and all the tectonic and earthquake activities and you'd be wrong.
When God created the world the waters were in one place and there was one contiguous landmass. God said to the earth let the earth bring form grass and herbs and fruit trees and let them reproduce after their kind.
Now do you suppose the earth obeyed that creative field? Suppose there were vast deserts like the Sahara desert that said I'm trying to learn but I just need it?
Bad salt plants unable to support vegetable life? You can go out in our world today and you can look at salt flats and you can look at deserts and you can say there have always been wastelands incapable of supporting vegetation in the world and you'd be wrong ladies and gentlemen because the present isn't the key to the past but scripture is.
For God said to the earth let the earth bring forth and the scripture says so the earth brought forth. That first biblical world was covered with a rich luxuriant verdant vegetable coverage.
There were no vast areas incapable of supporting vegetable life. I don't have time to go through this entire creation structure and show you the characteristics. Let me assert some other things to you that are essential though.
When God finished creation he said to man I give you the fruit of the trees and I give you the herb of the field and that's going to be your food and man was vegetarian. And God said to the animals I have given you every green herb for food.
And as the world came from the hand of God there was no death in the human kingdom or in the animal kingdom. Now you say there was death in the plant kingdom.
Yes there was. But we need to realize that plants are never called in the Bible living creatures. That is they do not have an animating life principle. And God did plan recycling in the plant kingdom for the basis of sustaining the animate creation, man and the animals.
And God gave to man and to the animals vegetable life or food for life. That means that the balance in nature was very much different than we know today.
Is that right? I sit in my yard every spring and I rejoice when those lovely little birds come who go in those high houses because I know they're going to eat mosquitoes and I'll be able to sit out in my yard.
What do you call those things? Marlins. Couldn't think of it for a moment. Yeah. Well you say if marlins and birds didn't eat mosquitoes you couldn't live in this world, right? And if foxes didn't kill rabbits there'd be no place to put your foot on the ground.
And therefore it's always been that way, right? Animals have had to prey on each other and if they prey on each other they that's how you control animal population, right? And therefore that's what our world is like and that's the way God is treating each other and God commanded the animals to be fruitful and multiply and he commanded man to be fruitful and multiply for it is God's will that his earth be full of his creatures.
Contrary to many contemporary sociologists who would like to use all of their energies to scare us to death with overpopulation so that man will be able to manipulate and control population growth.
Well you see the character of life in that world was very much different than the character of life we find in our world. There's another thing that was true in that world that's not true in our world and that's this.
Man was king of the animals. King Kong wasn't king. Adam was king. God said to man, have dominion over the animals. And man stood under God as God's vice region.
Perfect balance between man and the animals, man ruled them. Perfect balance between man and the vegetable kingdom. Perfect balance between man and his wife. Perfect balance in relationship between man and God.
And everything functioned and God said behold it is very good and right relationships were established but something changed it. Sin. Let me give you a quick summary of Genesis chapter 3.
If you don't believe I'm giving you scripture, I want you to go home today and read these first three chapters. If I read it to you and then comment on it, I won't get finished.
All right, in Genesis chapter 3 we find Adam rebels against God along with his wife and as a consequence certain judgments come into the world. The first judgment comes on an animal known as a serpent.
The serpent was the most sophisticated form of animal life that God created but as a part of its judgment it is now crawling on its belly. You can look at serpents till doomsday and conclude that they've always crawled on their belly because they crawl on their belly now and you'd be wrong.
The serpent was the highest form of the land animals before that judgment according to Genesis 3. Woman was cursed. Excuse me, judge. Curse is not used to.
God said to the woman, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conceptions. woman was going to have an increase of two things.
She's going to have an increase of pain and an increase of conceptions. I suggest to you that the procreation balance at creation in which man would have been able to reproduce himself was not the 28-day fertility cycle in which woman operates today.
Adam and Eve could have existed in the garden up to 70 years. We usually conclude that if God finished the work on the sixth day and the seventh day God rested, by Sunday noon they had eaten of the fruit, right?
Why do we conclude that? Because if they hadn't, they would have had babies, right? Wrong. Because God said to Eve, I'm going to multiply your conception. I suggest to you that the 28-day fertility cycle with which woman lives today has come as a consequence of sin.
It has come about because the fact that death was introduced and population structure would have to now be adapted to the principle of death and woman is going to be capable of multiple conception.
Can you imagine what it was like for a woman in the post-Edenic world and before the flood when they lived for seven, eight, nine hundred years, fertile from the age of 75 to the age of 750 to 800 under judgment of God for multiple conception?
Can you imagine how many children could be born under those circumstances? So, sorry girls, you're kind of like the old gray mare, you just ain't what you used to be.
There's been some changes and it's been a dramatic change and it's a change in process. You might be a gynecologist, you might be an obstetrician and you might conclude that having worked on and worked with thousands of women that the 28-day fertility cycle and when ovulation takes place and fertility is present, that indeed under those conditions a woman can become impregnated by the sperm and it's always been that way and that woman would always have pain in childbirth because to move a child down the birth canal is always going to involve stretching and tearing and you'd be wrong because Eve was judged by God to pain at childbirth and to multiple conception.
So there have been changes. In point of fact, so dramatic have been the changes that there's been very few things you have ever seen just like God created, if anything at all.
Let's see, what else do I have time to cover here? Death comes, right? Death comes into the world. Man is subject to death. The human kingdom is subject to death. The animal kingdom is subject to death. Man loses his dominion over the animals.
Man now stays in tyranny of the animals and the animals are in conflict with man for limited food supply. God judges the earth. He says to Adam, Cursed is the ground for thy sake.
In toil and in the sweat of thy face are you going to eat bread because the earth is no longer going to yield its strength to thee and an earth which was once covered with a pristine, worthwhile, noble vegetable coverage is now going to have mixed with it thorns, thistles, and noxious growth.
Dandelion, boxtail, and all that stuff that I keep cutting with my lawnmower and that I pay a lot of money to try to get rid of every year.
The quality of vegetable life changes. The character of the productivity of the soil changes so it isn't as if God created and everything has remained constant just like it was when God created it.
There have been changes. These changes have come because God has acted directly in history by judgment. Now that second biblical world from the time of the fall to the time of the flood, the water vapor canopy was still above the heavens.
There was still a temperate climate on the face of the entire earth. The day-night cycle still operated. There was no rainfall in those first two biblical worlds for the scripture tells us that a moisture came up from the midst of the ground.
water was stored in the mantle of the earth under pressure and it caused the mist that came up and watered the face of the ground and the source of moisture came from the earth through small fissures in the earth's crust that watered the earth and rainfall wasn't the source of moisture in those worlds.
And life developed in 1656 years after Adam was driven out of the garden. Life developed and culture developed through two lines, the line of Cain and the line of Seth.
And these two lines came one in seven generations and one in ten to a threefold breakdown and these two lines developed one in rebellion against God one a godly line seeking to serve God and population grew and culture and technology developed until you come to Genesis 6 and you read that God says the earth is so full of violence and it is so wicked he repents that he ever made it and he's going to destroy it in all flesh with it.
Except. No. There's one righteous man. No. In Genesis 6 we find that there's an intermingling by marriage of two lines.
The consequence of this intermingling is a breakdown of moral principle and therefore ultimately moral principles are set aside. Anarchy sets in. Rebellion. Indeed rebellion.
Lawlessness. Violence characterize the world and God says judgment is coming. Do you know how many people there could have been in that world ladies and gentlemen? Do you know how many people there could have been on the earth at the time of the flood with only six children per family?
There could have been one billion people at flood times. I think most of us had the notion that perhaps the human family had developed the 40,000 and they were in one little corner of the world.
The Bible seems to teach that the whole earth was populated by God's image bearers and the whole earth was populated by the animal kingdom and there was a vast population and when God said a flood was coming it was going to bring dramatic changes to life in this world.
A whole generation of godly people lost their heritage so that there was only one righteous perfect man at flood time and his name was Noah. Isn't it interesting that Christ says it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the days of the coming of the son of man.
They're going to be marrying and giving in marriage. And moral principles and values will be breaking down in the Christian community and the vitality of the Christian community will be sacked as indeed the value system of the pagan all of a sudden infiltrates and permeates the thinking of the believer so that as far as actual external values by which one lives there'll be no way to mark a distinction between those who walk with God and those who don't.
And I almost think that day is right here. You say well you don't know me very well no but I know your kids I've had hundreds of them at the college and I'll tell you something they don't come to Cedarville with a Christian value system.
Oh you say but the highest value of my life is God and Maranatha Baptist and Pastor Brock and the school and everything. Is that where you give your time and your energy? Stop listening to what you're saying and see what you do with your time.
Stop listening to the system that you constantly spit out of your mouth. In fact you ought to treat yourself as a liar. Don't assume that what you say actually constitutes it. See where your energy goes.
See where you spend your thought time. See where you give your actual chronological time. What is it you pursue? For most of us we're caught in the same value system that permeates our culture.
The dollar. The possession. And we'll put our blood money in the offering plate and send the missionaries out and we'll articulate a right vocabulary but the structure and the goal of our life is geared to the pursuit of that which satisfies us.
The flood came. The windows of heaven were open. This is where I believe God released the water canopy that was suspended above the firmament and that the primary source of water for the flood was the release of that water canopy through the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep were broken up.
The scripture says subterranean oceans in the earth's crust were released under terrific pressure as large cracks or earthquake activity took place and all of a sudden a sudden destruction hit the world and the character of this destruction is absolutely devastating.
I suggest to you that under flood conditions when that water was on the face of the earth when those oceanic structures in the in the crust of the earth were released that what we have is an earth that is under tremendous pressure and it's an earth going through fantastic catastrophe.
Ladies and gentlemen if we had a water column on the earth 10,000 feet high as a flood position do you know how much pressure that is represented down on the outer side of the earth's crust of the sea level?
Two and one quarter times of the pressure for square inch under a 10,000 foot water column. You know what it is now? 14.7.
You realize our earth's crust is suspended between two pressure systems. We've got gravity pressing down on the outside at 14.7 times of pressure per square inch.
On the underside of our crust we have fluid inside of our earth and our earth is spinning and this fluid is pressing up by centrifugal force and that fluid pressing up is pressing against the lower side of this crust and gravity and magnetism are pressing down on the outer side and therefore what you walk on is suspended in between two pressure systems.
Nowhere near as solid as you think it is. Under flood activity if the highest mountains were covered I suggest to you that the crust of this earth looked like a bellows.
It was in movement. I suggest to you that the hydrocarbons that we know of in our world today were formed under these conditions. The vast amount of vegetable life and vast amount of animal life was tracked under terrific tectonic activity and with this pressure were fossilized in the crust of the earth.
I suggest to you that mountain ranges as we know them today have come as a consequence of this activity. I don't believe God created the Alps. I don't believe God created the Andes.
I believe all of the typography of our present earth was formed under flood conditions. You say you're a radical, no? What amazes me is this. If all of this that I look at is so beautiful and it's all been affected by sin, no wonder John runs out of words to describe the new earth.
If we find such beauty in what we have around us today, all of it permeated and affected by the image bearer rebelling against God. Now I don't have time to delineate all of this.
Flood conditions bring changes. Now the climate changes. We have formation of polar ice caps. You say, where'd all that water go? Hey, a lot of it's still here. That's why 73% of our earth is ground by water.
Don't believe it was created that way. Don't believe it's going to remain that way. So the changes come. And again I say to you, science says present process is able to explain the origin, the development of life, and to predict the future.
That's why they say, where is the promise of his coming? Because nothing like this ever happened before. Peter says they've got amnesia, which they willfully choose. They have forgotten that the world being in the water and out of the water, being overflowed with water, perished.
And so dramatic was that change, Peter says, that the heavens that then were and the earth passed away, but we have heavens and earth which are now, and our present heaven and earth is being stored with fire in the heavens, the same place where the water was, for a day of perdition of ungodly men.
For the heavens shall melt with a fervent heat and pass away with a great noise, and everything being on fire shall burn up. The same place where God stored the water by his word for that first catastrophic universal judgment, God has presently stored fire in the same heavens for a second universal catastrophic judgment, which is going to terminate history.
And it's going to bring new heaven and new earth. Not only is present process not adequate to explain the past, but it's inadequate to predict the future. So it seems to me that when it comes to origins and development of life, I cannot at all operate with a contemporary viewpoint.
I'm just going to simply have to say, Mr. Scientist, I cannot accept your basic principle of operation because it will not square with what my Bible tells me.
And I refuse to accommodate my Bible to what science teaches because I'm confident of this, that when all the facts are in, this book will be vindicated as true and accurate in every assertion it makes.
And I'll never misplace my confidence if I place it in what God has said. Now there's an area, and I'll just touch it and then close by giving you a couple of minutes for questions.
There's a whole area that we also could think about, and that's this biblical idea of a kind. God created the kind and said, reproduce after your kind.
And there has been change and development in the kind, ladies and gentlemen. How many original people belong to mankind at creation? How many?
You could say two or one if you wish. It really doesn't matter. From one we got two. For Eve was derived from that. There were two. Were they black?
Were they white? What racial structure were there? Were there three original pairs, one for each race created? One pair, right?
And therefore the racial continuum as we know it today has developed since creation from the original pair. Is that not right? I don't know any other way to explain.
I frankly believe it also developed after the flood. For I do not believe that the three sons of Noah represented the three races. And therefore I think the racial development as we know it today, and I want to be careful, it's a continuum.
There probably isn't one racially pure person in this room. That's a myth. All of us probably have racial mixture somewhere in history. But I would believe that the race is developed in the post-blood world.
Isn't it interesting that God was able to preserve the whole created kind of man, by how many people on the ark? Eight.
Now you can go through all the animals that we know about and you can work that out. Horses belong to a kind. Horse kind probably had two original created pairs.
The ass-like variety and the horse-like variety. You say, why two pairs? Because of difference in chromosome count, but they're still capable of true chemical fertilization. That is, they are able to chemically fertilize the seed.
I believe that's what constitutes a kind. It's a principle of reproduction. Now the entire horse kind could have been preserved through the flood in the ark with four animals.
Male and female horse and male and female animals. You don't need palominos and shetlands and arabians. He didn't preserve male and female of every variety of the kind.
He preserved the kind. Dog kind probably had three originally created pairs. There's a dog-like variety, the hyena-like variety, and the fox-like variety.
They're all capable of true chemical fertilization. Could have preserved the entire dog kind with six animals on the ark. You say, I thought he had chihuahuas and poodles.
He had to have poodles. He'd have been lonely without his poodle on the ark, wouldn't he? Who would he have talked to? Only, no. Okay? But I don't think we should even become static in our concept of what constitutes a kind and conclude that there has been no development or change within the created kind.
I believe there has. I believe I could manifest it biblically. What am I saying? I'm saying this. That I hold to recent creation in six 24-hour days, probably 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, and that will show you how obscurantist I really am.
That this creation, when it came from the hand of God, was perfect. That as a consequence of human sin, God has acted in the processes of nature by judgment. He has brought about change, and I've got to go back and trace those changes if I want to see how life has developed and how the quality of life has changed in the world.
And if I want to see what's future, I've got to go what God has said about the future, and I've got to learn eschatology to see indeed what God is going to do yet in the future to change the quality and the processes that are extant in nature.
In the kingdom, you recall that the lion's going to eat straw again, isn't it? And children are going to leave them. And the lion and the lamb are going to play together. There's going to be changes yet to come, eh?
So that the key to the past is scripture. The key to the understanding of development is scripture. I hold to creationism. That doesn't mean I'm a statusist who believes everything is in situ just like God created it.
No, there has been change. Judgment gives me a model to trace it. It seems to me we don't have to back down in this area of art. We've got three minutes. I was going to try to leave a tent to answer questions.
I won't harass you like me. For participation. Can I ask a question? Sure. Oh, all right. Did you equate Genesis 1-1 with the six days?
Yes, I did. He didn't say that. If I equate it with the six days. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Exodus 20-11. In six days, Jehovah made the heavens and the earth.
People will say, but there's a difference between made and created, right? Well, if you go to Genesis 1-26 and 27, you'll find that God says, let us make man in our image.
And then the next verse says, so God created man in his image. And therefore, I do not believe the Hebrew verb bara and the Hebrew verb asah have different meanings.
I believe they're synonyms. So, yes, I do put Genesis 1-1 into the six days. All right, I'll nutshell it this way.
I'm dealing it from chronologies. I can't go completely backwards. In other words, it's easy to find out how long between Adam and the flood. I mean, I can tell you that. There's 1,656 years there if you take Genesis 5 to be a trustworthy chronology.
So you have approximately 18 generations. Now, we can date the Exodus rather accurately. Now, it's between, it's from the Exodus back to the flood that we break down in B.C.
dating with certainty. But allowing for all the possible gaps that could be there. Let me show you an instance of a gap. Who's Moses' father and mother? Amram and Jochebed, right?
Well, if that's father and mother, then Moses had 2,700 living cousins, which is a little bit impossible. What we need to realize is the son of, in Hebrew, is not a technical phrase, and it often can refer to grandparent-type relationships.
So you can't be positive in every instance. So what I'm doing here is simply leaving room for the possible gaps. Also, I would think that we would have a terrific change in radiocarbon activity as a consequence of the flood.
And carbon-14, which has a half-life of 3,007 years, would give us a full life of 7,004 years, which is what I would judge to be approximately flood time.
See, if you put a water canopy up there, the cosmic radiation that bombards us today, which science uses for its dating methods, by the way, would clearly be affected by that vapor canopy.
So those two things, basically, are what I would use there. Thank you. You must admit that the 930 class has a great deal of variety, doesn't it?
Are you glad you came this morning? I would remind you that Professor Greer will be back with us in July. So make a note of that.
His topic will not be the same then, although I'm sure it will have some of the foundation that you've had this morning. I'd remind you that each week is different. Some of you do not realize, although the class is mentioned for 930, it really starts at 920, because we give everyone that comes their full time to speak.
We're happy that you came this morning. You may fellowship for a few moments. When the prelude starts, I would appreciate if you'd be quiet. Greet Mr. Greer, encourage him, and thank him for coming.
It takes time to come. We appreciate all of those who have taken... he's what is... So the most time you can't know I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be I'm not going to be lip I'm not going to be lip I'm not going to be lip