Evolution and the Second Coming.

Extract from Countdown book written in 2010.

It is safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked but I would rather not consider that).           (Richard Dawkins)

Since evolution is almost universally accepted by the education system, the media, museums and even governments, it is actually quite a brave person who dares to question evolution and put forward the creationist view. People have lost their jobs for publicly challenging evolution.  No funding is available for research which would show that evolution could not have happened.  

Peter wrote in his epistle that:

‘Scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.’ For this they wilfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.  But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.’         (2 Peter 3.3-7)

If you analyse what Peter has written here he is saying that in the last days people will scoff at the following:

1. The promise of the Second Coming of Christ.
2. The idea of a special creation by the Word of God.
3. The historic event of the Flood.

The Bible teaches that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  He created all creatures with the ability to reproduce ‘after their own kind’ and created humans in His image (i.e. with a different nature to animals and capable of a spiritual relationship with God).  Because of human disobedience to God the relationship between God and humanity was lost and sin and death entered the world.  This event, known as the Fall, has affected not just human beings but the whole of creation.  God promised a redeemer who would save us from the consequences of sin and death – the ‘seed of the woman’ who would bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3.15).  This was fulfilled in the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus for our sins.  

The Fall was followed by the catastrophe of the Flood which was worldwide and has further altered conditions on earth.  According to the biblical view of ‘catastrophism’ (the present world being shaped by the catastrophes of the Fall and the Flood), the world is relatively young.  There are a number of evidences of this including the fact that the silt at the end of great rivers like the Mississippi and the Amazon is consistent with around 4500 years of river flow (i.e. the time since the Flood), not millions of years.   Jesus said there would be a further catastrophe (‘as in the days of Noah’) at the end of this age, which would precede His Second Coming and the Millennial kingdom age in which He would reign over a renewed earth.

Evolution would have us believe that in the beginning (about 15 billion years ago) all the matter and energy which make up the universe was concentrated in a tiny super dense ball smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence.  This raises another unanswered question, ‘How did that tiny super dense ball get there?’  Some would even say that there was nothing there in the beginning, which means that, “In the beginning there was nothing, and then it exploded!”  Out of this explosion the entire universe came.  It is supposed that over vast periods of time the matter from the Big Bang cooled down and the universe expanded.  Some of it turned into matter – hydrogen and helium gas.  These gases somehow collapsed to form stars and galaxies of stars.  Some of the stars created the heavier elements in their cores and then exploded, distributing these elements into space.  Some of the heavier elements allegedly began to stick together and formed the earth and other planets.  

To believe this is entirely a matter of faith, since no one was there when it happened and nothing like it can be observed happening today. Evolution is actually a belief system, and not true science.  True science can be tried and tested today, whereas evolution cannot as it deals primarily with things that are said to have happened in the past.  It is also a matter of faith that God created the heavens and the earth, but this is a much more reasonable faith than to believe that it all came about by chance.

There are a number of scientific problems with the Big Bang.  For example it contradicts the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which states that with the passing of time there is a deterioration in everything.  Things go from order to disorder.  Those who believe the Big Bang have to believe the opposite happened, that order increased.  Out of the chaotic disorder of the supposed primordial super explosion, our complex universe arose, including the planet earth with its unique features supporting life – water, atmosphere, soil, distance from the sun etc.  In fact there are many scientists today who dispute the Big Bang theory for reasons which include questions about the structure of the universe, the existence of matter and anti-matter and the formation of heavy elements.

Another issue which evolution has to explain is how life in its incredible complexity emerged out of non-life.  Darwin’s Origin of the Species actually fails to give any explanation for how this could have happened.  Nor can anybody give evidence for this today. Faced with the fact that even the simplest cell has more information put into it than an encyclopaedia, evolution has a problem in explaining where all the information came from. At the time of Darwin it was believed that cells were ‘blobs of jelly’.  We now know that each cell is like a tiny but extremely complex factory.  The human body consists of around 100,000,000,000,000 of them. National Geographic magazine explained that if the genetic instructions within the DNA of a single cell were written out ‘they would fill a thousand 600 page books.  Each cell is a world brimming with as many as two hundred trillion tiny groups of atoms called molecules.’   As the Psalmist has written, ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Your works are wonderful, I know that full well’ (Psalm 139.14).

Darwin acknowledged that ‘to suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection (evolution) seems absurd in the highest possible degree.’  Richard Dawkins has said that ‘it would only take about 364,000 generations to evolve a good fish eye with a lens.’  This does not explain how a creature which needs sight to survive managed to carry on living for all these millions of years without eyes.  Hugely complex organs like the eye, the heart, the brain etc are all vital to survival. A functioning reproductive system, with male and female elements operating perfectly is the only way even one new generation can appear!  If the system is not functioning in the first generation, the species dies out.  The Genesis record that God made all creatures able to live and to reproduce after their own kind makes much more sense on this issue than the conclusion of evolution.  

Sadly much of the professing church goes along with the evolutionary hypothesis, missing the point that if it is true, then not only is Genesis a myth, but there are serious problems with the rest of the Bible.  Creation is taught throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and is assumed to be true by the Lord Jesus and the Apostles. The Creationist view teaches that the world began perfect and then proceeded to deteriorate as a result of Adam’s sin.  Death was the result.  In order to redeem mankind from the consequences of sin, God became man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who delivered us from death by dying for our sins on the cross and rising from the dead.  

Evolution teaches that there were millions of years of death and destruction before humans appeared on the scene, so there is no connection between sin and death and therefore no need for Jesus to die as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.  

Opponents of Christianity understand this.  Dave Hunt quotes The American Atheist  in his book Occult Invasion (p.35):  

But if death preceded man and was not a result of Adams’s sin, then sin is a fiction.  If sin is a fiction we have no need for a Saviour.  Evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason for Jesus’ earthly life.  If Jesus was not the Redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.

Evolutionists like to point out that the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury both accept evolution, as do liberal evangelicals and almost all of our Bible colleges.  However, as Ken Ham has pointed out, if we reject the Genesis account of creation, we destroy the foundation on which the whole of God’s revelation is built and the house comes tumbling down in the end.   

I do not have space here to give more scientific arguments for Creation but recommend the work of Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International for this.  The Answers Book has a number of good arguments for the Genesis account being true. Other books on the subject are:  

The Lie – Evolution by Ken Ham @ £7.  This book shows the consequences of rejecting the Genesis account and why evolution is based on false assumptions.  

In Six Days @ £10.  This book answers the question ‘Can any scientist with a PhD believe the idea of a literal six day creation?’  50 scientists from around the world say ‘Yes.’  This book is for the more technically minded!

Extensive websites on topics relating to creation and evolution written by scientists can be found at www.answersingenesis.org, www.c-r-t.co.uk and www.creation.com.