Creation: a Key to the Gospel

Dr Don Batten B.Sc.Agr. (Hons I) PhD

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1

Evolution: ‘no room for God’?

—Sir Julian Huxley, Director-General of UNESCO, in Essays of a Humanist [1964], Penguin Books, UK, 1969 reprint, pp.82–83).

“In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created: it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion.”

Praise Darwin (evolution)!?

Blocks – Creator Saviour

CreatorLawSin

JudgeSaviour

2 Corinthians 10:5

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Creation Ministries International

Genesis harmonisations

LOCAL

FLOOD

THEISTIC EVOLUTIONDAY AGE

FRAMEWORK

HYPOTHESISGAP

THEORY

PROGRESSIVE CREATION

Millions

of

Years?

PainDeathKillingDiseaseThorns

StruggleSufferingExtinction

Genesis 1:31

God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Everything was “very good”

Garden of Eden“…it was very good.”Genesis 1:31

Eden on bones

DEATH

DISEASE

SUFFERING

“…it was very good.”Genesis 1:31

And there was

evening

and there was

morning

one day (literally; Hebrew yom echad)

Genesis 1:5b

Meanings of ‘day’ in English

he would go to bed early Sunday evening and rise early in the morning of the following day, and spend the next six days travelling, during the

day, to cross the whole country.

In my father’s day,

“If, for example, the word ‘day’ in these chapters does not mean a period of twenty-four hours, the interpretation of scripture is hopeless.”

Marcus Dods (1834–1909), The Book of Genesis, Armstrong, NY, p. 4, 1907.*Scottish Prof. of New Testament Exegesis and then Principal, New College, Edinburgh.

Marcus Dods* on ‘day’

Order of creation:Genesis vs big bang/evolution

DAY 1 DAY 2 DAY 3

DAY 4 DAY 5 DAY 6

SIX DAYS OF CREATION

Romans 1:20

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

John 1:1-3In the beginning was the Word, and

the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the

beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was

made that has been made.

Jesus and age of universe

Time line of some 4,000 years before Christ

Time line for 14,000,000,000 years since ‘big bang’

Jesus: “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” Mark 10:6

Adam and Eve (Day 6)

‘Adam and Eve’

The beginning

The beginning

Which leads to …“If Jesus as a finite human being erred from time to time, there is no reason at all to suppose that Moses, Paul, John wrote Scripture without error. Rather, we are wise to assume that the biblical authors expressed themselves as human beings writing from the perspectives of their own finite, broken horizons.”Sparks, “After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age”, BioLogos.org, 2010.

Adam to Abraham chronology

The Bible tells us that death and suffering were

not part of the original created order and they will

not be part of the future restored heavens and earth

For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers

the pains of childbirth together until now.

Romans 8:22

… the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay… v. 21

Rom

ans

8:21

,22

Death creationEvolutionary story

Real history

NEW HEAVEN

AND NEW

EARTHINTRUSION

DeathDisease

Pain, SufferingEmotional Anguish

1 Corinthians 15:22

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Can either man not be a real person?

1 Cor. 15:45 1 Cor. 15:45

“The First Adam”

“The Last Adam”

Bad news … good newsBad News

SinMan is lost. We need to be saved from our sin.

Good News

SalvationChrist provides

salvation from sin and death

“I am an evangelist. I go around and talk with people—one-on-one conversations. In my time on college campuses and talking to high schoolers, the number one answer I get for there not being a God, so then I don't have to believe, is evolution.”—Personal correspondence, Mark Cahill, evangelist and author of One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven

Evolution and evangelism

Blocks – Creator Saviour

Summarising …

Non-traditional views of Genesis (if you think about the consequences):1. Rob Christ of His glory as Creator2. Undermine the goodness of God3. Undermine the Gospel4. Undermine hermeneutics5. Undermine eschatology (end times)6. Impede evangelism

What changed England into a pagan nation?

“… I myself have little doubt that in England it was geology and the theory of evolution that changed us from a Christian to a pagan nation.”

—F. Sherwood Taylor, Geology changes the outlook, in Ideas and Beliefs of the Victorians, Sylvan Press Ltd, London, p. 195, 1949. (one of a series of talks broadcast on BBC radio).

(Curator, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford).

“Naturalistic evolution is the great intellectual rival to Christianity in the Western world. It is the creation myth of the secular elites and their intellectual weapon of choice in public debate.”

“Evolution: rival to Christianity”

albertmohler.com/2011/02/01/creation-vs-evolution-the-new-shape-of-the-debate/

Dr Albert Mohler,

President, Southern

Baptist Theological Seminary

What about theistic evolution?“I believe that it [the theistic evolution movement] represents a very significant challenge to the integrity of Christian theology and the church’s understanding of everything from the authority and truthfulness of the Bible to the meaning of the Gospel. … The theory of evolution is no mere nuisance—it represents one of the greatest challenges to Christian faith and faithfulness in our times.”

Dr Albert Mohler, President,

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,

Baptist Press News 26 Jan 2011

www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=34514

• observable

• repeatable

• experiments

Science studies the repeatable. History studies the unrepeatable.

An important distinction

Noah’s Ark

The Flood: key to understanding history

(Genesis 6-8)

Noah’s Ark: real!300 cubits (~143 m)

• Carrying capacity: 15,000 tonnes!• Korean naval architects showed that

the shape would have been very stable in huge seas.

Can you see the people?

Widespread fossilization—sudden burial in mud

Global flood!

Dinosaur and fish fossilized together

Large-scale sedimentary formationsCoconino

Sandstone

Kaibab Upwarp (Grand

Canyon, eastern Arizona)

Wipes out ~500 million years of evolutionary time!

70 my

Cross section of Grand Canyon geology showing

monocline and Kaibab Upwarp

From Creation magazine

Observations blow away 480 million years of imaginary evolutionary time!

Carbon dating: evidence against ‘millions of years’!

Almost every bit of fossil organic material contains measurable carbon-14 (coal, bone, etc.)—even diamonds supposedly billions of years old!

But, anything older than 50,000 years should have no measurable carbon-14!

Powerful evidence against

millions and billio

ns of years!

“… flexible and resilient and when stretched returns to its original shape.”

Mary Schweitzer, Science 307(5717):1952, 25 March 2005.

Blood vessels

“This is not something I ever dreamed I’d see.”

+Nature News

Blood cells and vessels in T. rex bones

Blood cells

Blue stars are young!Blue stars burn H up to 200,000 x faster than our Sun All spiral galaxies contain some blue stars Burn up H in < 1 million years Star formation? Not observed. No viable model.

Orion

Continental erosionContinents are eroding & washing into the sea.

creation.com/eroding-ages

Continent

Erosion

Sea floor sediment

Eroded sediment

Continental erosion• Continents are eroding & washing into the

sea. • The average rate of erosion: 60 mm / 1000

years. • The basement rocks of continents said to

be ~2.5 billion years old. • Erosion would remove 150 kilometres of

continent in that time! • Continents would be levelled in just 10 Ma.

creation.com/eroding-ages

101 Evidences for a young age of the earth

creation.com/age

Blue Mountains (Australia)

Receding stage of floodwaters

1. Sheet flow plateaux

2. Channel flow valleys

I Peter 3:15

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.