The Creator Revealed

Alternatives to the Biblical Creation

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: TCR

Program Code: TCR180011A


00:32 Welcome to The Creator Revealed.
00:34 My name is Tim Standish.
00:36 And by profession, I'm a scientist,
00:38 and I'm also a human being.
00:40 That means that I think
00:42 about the theological implications of the science
00:47 that I do.
00:48 You know, it is so interesting to me
00:51 when you see,
00:52 we're both Bible believing Christians.
00:55 We believe this word is inspired by God.
00:59 And we believe
01:00 that God created the earth in six days
01:04 because He said He did.
01:07 But today, we want to welcome you.
01:10 And we're so glad you're joining us
01:12 because we will be talking about alternative ideas
01:16 that are out there in the world
01:19 to the biblical account of creation.
01:22 Exactly.
01:23 And as you can imagine,
01:24 there are actually a fair number of these ideas
01:27 that we could talk about.
01:29 During the course of this series,
01:30 we've made frequent references
01:33 to Darwinian evolution,
01:36 this materialistic view,
01:38 this kind of atheistic
01:41 understanding of reality.
01:46 And in this episode,
01:49 I would like to talk about
01:52 the sort of spectrum of things in between.
01:56 But that would take an awfully long time
01:57 because there are people
01:59 who have all kinds of
02:02 interesting ideas out there.
02:05 I think it would be best for us to concentrate
02:09 on one of the most popular alternative views.
02:13 This is an attempt to reconcile the claims
02:18 of this materialistic philosophy
02:21 with the clear record of history
02:25 that's contained in God's Word in the Bible.
02:28 So what you're saying is,
02:29 this is the one
02:30 where people believe in a type of evolution,
02:34 but they claim to believe the Bible.
02:36 Precisely, and it's called theistic evolution.
02:40 Before we do that though,
02:42 let's take a look at one of the things
02:45 that the Bible says about the creation.
02:48 Okay.
02:49 This is in Exodus,
02:51 it's Exodus 31.
02:55 And a lot of people don't realize
02:56 that the fourth commandment is actually repeated here.
03:00 Let's read exactly what it says.
03:04 "Therefore the children of Israel
03:07 shall keep the Sabbath,
03:09 to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations
03:13 as a perpetual covenant."
03:15 So this is not a covenant
03:17 that is going to go away.
03:20 The children of Israel, the descendants of Abraham.
03:24 I would include Christians in this
03:26 because obviously we are adopted,
03:29 we are all Abraham's seed
03:32 as Christians.
03:34 So this Sabbath is somehow important
03:37 for Bible believing Christian.
03:38 And the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week,
03:41 which in the creation account,
03:43 it says that at the end of six days,
03:46 God said all is very good, and on the seventh, He rested.
03:49 Exactly.
03:50 And just to make sure that we get that,
03:52 this Sabbath that is a memorial to the creation.
03:55 The fourth commandment goes on,
03:57 and it says,
04:00 "It is a sign between Me
04:03 and the children of Israel forever,
04:06 for in six days the Lord made the heavens
04:09 and the earth,
04:11 and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed."
04:14 And then Moses puts this in just to make sure
04:17 that we understand how important this is.
04:19 "And when He had made an end of speaking with him,"
04:22 this is Moses, "on Mount Sinai, He,"
04:26 this is God, "gave Moses two tablets of the testimony,
04:30 tablets of stone,
04:32 written with the finger of God."
04:36 So God actually wrote Himself in stone
04:41 that He created in six days.
04:44 This is clearly recorded there in the Bible.
04:47 So what do we do when we, Christians,
04:50 and we're looking for some kind of compromise
04:53 that allows us to feel like we are scientists,
04:57 and we are Christians at the same time?
05:01 Well, I am a scientist and a Christian.
05:04 And I can assure you
05:06 that there is no reason to abandon
05:10 what the Bible says
05:13 because of the false claims of Darwinism.
05:18 So you believe in a six day literal?
05:21 Well, what else would I believe?
05:24 Absolutely, that's what the Bible says.
05:25 As a scientist I believe data.
05:26 I obviously wasn't there,
05:28 I have to believe the witnesses that we have.
05:31 And the Bible has proven to be
05:33 a reliable witness about everything else.
05:36 I mean, how would you know how long it took anyway?
05:40 There is no practical way
05:42 that science can really answer these questions.
05:45 So let's look at theistic evolution.
05:49 And we have to be careful here because theistic evolution...
05:52 Explain what that means, theistic evolution?
05:54 Theistic evolution,
05:55 I'm going to actually give you a definition here.
05:56 Okay.
05:58 But the reason I want to be careful about it
05:59 is because there are many different definitions
06:02 that people make of this,
06:04 but at its core
06:05 this definition really kind of explains it.
06:09 Theistic evolution is the belief
06:11 that God used the process of evolution
06:14 to create living things, including humans.
06:18 So instead of this creation account
06:20 that's in the Bible,
06:22 God used a different method,
06:24 the death driven process of evolution.
06:27 That's the basic idea.
06:30 Now once you sort of agree on that,
06:34 if you want to be a theistic evolutionist,
06:36 then there are many other little details,
06:39 and that's what twists around the definitions
06:42 in lots of different ways.
06:43 And sometimes people come up
06:45 with something almost identical,
06:46 they call evolutionary creation.
06:50 But all of these things sort of get wound up together
06:54 into this basic idea that God,
06:56 His method of creation was evolution.
07:02 Here is a group called BioLogos,
07:04 and they put it this way.
07:05 They say, "We fully affirm that the Bible is the inspired
07:08 and authoritative word of God."
07:09 And, of course,
07:11 all Bible believers would be saying amen at that point,
07:13 but then they go on and they say,
07:15 "We also accept the science of evolution,
07:18 as the best description for how God brought
07:20 about the diversity of life on earth."
07:22 And many, many, many very eminent scientists
07:26 and so on actually belong to this group,
07:27 including Francis Collins,
07:29 who led the effort to sequence the human genome.
07:33 So these are eminent guys.
07:35 And they're thinking very hard about this.
07:37 I don't want to mock them.
07:38 I just disagree with them because you know what?
07:41 This idea is simply absolutely incompatible
07:44 with the scripture.
07:45 Let's look at what scripture says.
07:48 Scripture starts out
07:49 by talking about the good creation.
07:51 In fact, God called it very good.
07:54 And then sin comes into the world,
07:56 the fall occurs,
07:57 and the result of sin, the wages of sin are death,
08:01 and this broken creation that we live in.
08:04 But the Bible doesn't stop there.
08:05 It goes on, and it provides the solution.
08:08 And the solution fits the problem.
08:12 So we have Jesus Christ,
08:14 who wins that victory over sin.
08:18 And therefore, victory over death,
08:22 and thus, they can be a good new creation
08:26 and eternal life.
08:27 That's the gospel.
08:29 That's right, that new creation.
08:30 So this is what the Bible says,
08:32 it's kind of the opposite of theistic evolution.
08:35 Obviously,
08:37 you can't get those two things in there together.
08:42 Well, let's look at how it is
08:46 that some Christians can somehow
08:48 rather shoehorn evolution
08:52 into some kind of belief in Jesus Christ saving us
08:57 by dying on the cross, okay?
08:59 Okay.
09:00 And so here is the idea of evolution
09:04 that these particular Christians believe.
09:07 Now bear in mind, this is not what I believe,
09:10 I believe what the Bible says,
09:12 I don't believe that this is actually true.
09:14 But the idea is this,
09:15 you start out with some kind of single-celled organism,
09:18 it evolves into something like a fish,
09:21 and then that fish evolves into something that crawls out
09:24 and becomes a land animal,
09:26 and that land animal develops some more
09:30 and becomes a brute of some kind, a brute.
09:34 And then something amazing happens.
09:38 Remember, this is not in the Bible,
09:39 this is this theory of how this could have worked
09:42 that is unbiblical, and I don't believe,
09:45 I just want you to see it.
09:46 So the idea is that
09:48 God somehow rather zaps
09:51 a soul into this brute.
09:55 So let's look at that again.
09:58 We start out, we keep evolving,
10:00 we keep evolving, we get to the brute.
10:02 God sticks a soul into the brute,
10:07 and the brute becomes a human being.
10:11 There is this kind of progress that we see with it,
10:16 and there is this event, this ensoulment event
10:21 that happens in the course of history,
10:22 and that's when we get human beings.
10:26 How, how...
10:28 That is just totally contradictory
10:31 to the Word of God.
10:33 Well, Exactly.
10:34 Because obviously, I think most people
10:37 who really seriously look at this in the Bible
10:41 understand that the idea
10:44 that the body and the soul
10:47 are two separate things,
10:50 that they can have an existence
10:53 separate from one another
10:55 really is not what the Bible says.
10:57 What the Bible says is,
10:59 God breathed into the body
11:03 that He had formed.
11:05 And man became a living soul
11:08 or a living being in some translations.
11:12 Something...
11:13 It's this combination of things that is required.
11:17 We could call it the breath of life or something.
11:19 Sometimes we do hear about the breath returning to God.
11:23 That's talked about in the Bible,
11:24 but the Bible doesn't talk about
11:26 some sentient, immortal soul
11:29 that goes up there and lives in heaven
11:32 without a body and those sorts of things.
11:34 And just in fact, in 1 Corinthians 15:53-57,
11:39 Paul clearly says
11:42 that we are not given immortality.
11:45 I mean, he tells Timothy
11:46 that only God alone is immortal right now
11:49 and we don't get immortality until the last trumpet.
11:54 Exactly.
11:55 So anyway, with this unbiblical belief system,
11:59 then you can death being a kind of different thing
12:02 than it was before the ensoulment.
12:05 Death becomes a separation of body and soul.
12:08 And all of a sudden, you can make sense
12:10 of what Jesus was doing on the cross.
12:12 He wasn't dying
12:13 for what normal people would call sin and death,
12:17 He was dying for this kind of made up kind of death,
12:21 this kind of idea of separation of body and soul there.
12:26 And you don't have to believe me.
12:30 The pope talks about this.
12:32 In fact, this is a papal encyclical
12:34 that I'm showing you here by Pius XII.
12:37 He wrote, "The teaching authority of the church
12:39 does not forbid that in conformity
12:41 with the present state of human sciences
12:43 and sacred theology, research and discussions,
12:46 on the part of men experienced in both fields,
12:49 take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution,
12:53 in as far as it inquires into the origin
12:56 of the human body
12:58 as coming from preexisting and living matter,
13:01 for the Catholic faith obliges us
13:03 to hold that souls
13:04 are immediately created by God."
13:07 So you can see here
13:08 that the pope himself saw this as a way
13:13 of solving the tension between Darwinian evolution
13:17 and biblical Christianity.
13:19 I might add that prior to this,
13:21 Catholics agreed with other Christians,
13:24 and many Catholics continued to agree
13:27 with other Bible believing Christians
13:28 that in fact,
13:30 theistic evolution is a false doctrine
13:32 that is unbiblical.
13:34 Anyway, let's continue on.
13:35 If we believe that evolution is true,
13:37 then either God chose to create animals
13:42 to suffer and die over the eons
13:44 when He could have created animals
13:46 perfect from the start.
13:48 Or God is incapable of fiat creation
13:51 that would avoid the evils of death,
13:53 struggle, and suffering.
13:55 Or animals lack souls
13:57 and thus feel no suffering at all,
13:59 which is obviously not true if you've ever had a pet.
14:02 So atheists,
14:03 they deny God's hand in nature's suffering,
14:06 theistic evolutionist actually blame Him for it.
14:11 It's really not a very attractive idea.
14:13 And when we compare it with what the Bible says,
14:16 the Bible promises
14:17 that God will wipe every tear from our eyes.
14:20 There'll be no more death or suffering.
14:22 That's the promise.
14:23 This is not the process that has made us.
14:27 This is the process
14:28 that Jesus Christ died on the cross to stop.
14:32 So...
14:33 Yeah, the creator is revealed
14:35 even by alternatives to the biblical creation
14:38 because they show
14:40 that the biblical truth reveals God's goodness.
14:45 So God's goodness is shown in the Bible
14:47 and it's clear
14:49 when it's compared to these other ideas.
14:50 Amen.
14:51 Boy, our time is gone for the first segment.
14:53 Please join us.
14:54 We'll be back in just a moment.


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Revised 2019-04-19