Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180011A
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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. |
Revised 2019-04-19