Crucial Questions about Creation

Crucial Questions  about Creation 

John K. Reed, Ph.D. 

CRUCIAL QUESTIONS ABOUT CREATION A Reasonable Hope Ministry Book Summerton, SC Copyright © 2004 John K. Reed Second Printing 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For permission or other information, contact Reasonable Hope Ministry. Reasonable Hope Ministry P.O. Box 26 Summerton, SC 29148 www.reasonablehope.com

ISBN 0-9762860-0-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2004116821

Scripture quotations (unless otherwise noted) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Cover illustration from Michael Osterrieder at www.istockphoto.com

Presents:

Crucial Questions  About Creation  A Book From: 

www.reasonablehope.com 

Acknowledgements  Thanks to Reasonable Hope Ministry for encouraging and guiding the development of this project. I appreciate all people who helped in the development of this book, especially Carl, Emmett, Clark, Jerry, Barron, and Beth. I have been privileged to sit under the teaching of many great theologians and pastors, some openly acknowledged in the pages of this book and others whose teaching infiltrates its contents. Of all these great men, Dr. Gordon Reed has been the most influential. Thanks, Dad! My loving wife and children supported me throughout this effort. Clark helped make publication possible. Thank you all.

Table of Contents

Page 1

Preface Introduction

Chapter 1

A Passion for Proper Perspective

Boundaries

Page 5 Page 14

Chapter 2 The Foundational Question about Creation Page 29 Chapter 3 The Derivative Importance of “How?”

Page 50

Chapter 4 The Derivative Importance of “When?”

Page 63

Chapter 5 Assyrians as far as the Eye Can See

Page 81

Chapter 6 Doxology

Page 87

Scripture References to Edwards’ Dissertation

Page 93

Bibliography

Page 104

Resources

Page 108

About Reasonable Hope Ministry

Page 109

Other Books from Reasonable Hope Ministry

Page 110

Preface 

It was a chilly fall night in Athens, Georgia. My friends and I made our way through a crowd of hundreds of equally eager Christians to hear the renowned theologian. The outside temperature could not cool our heat of anticipation. Books are fine, but cannot compare to hearing the inflection and emphasis of the same words coming straight from the source. Although I was a student of geology, I was an enthusiastic amateur theologian and had already read many of the speaker’s books (and even understood parts of them). He had become and remains a strong spiritual influence in my life, but since he was already advanced in years, I knew this would probably be my last chance to see him in person outside the Kingdom. So we braved the crisp night air, the crowds, and the moretowards-the-back-than-the-front seating. Jackpot! Our high expectations of his message were more than exceeded. He spoke clearly, passionately, and cogently about his faith and about living in a rapidly deteriorating culture. He argued persuasively for the need to be a Christian in all aspects of life, and not just an apathetic churchgoer. Spiritual static crackled across the crowd. Finally, as was his habit, he took several questions from the audience, displaying his encyclopedic knowledge and logical rigor. What an evening! Then someone asked him a question about the creation movement and the book of Genesis. This was 1981, and many Christians were buzzing about the small group of “creationists” led by an engineer, Dr.

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Henry Morris, and a biochemist, Dr. Duane Gish. Not content to stay behind church walls, these men were bearding secular experts in their own universities. In one debate after another in the previous decade, they had advanced a scientific case against evolution that had stunned, then enraged the academic elite. Often, it was the Christian arguing a case from science, while atheists debated points of theology! Having recently become a proponent of the creationist position, I was eager to hear it supported by one of my favorite theologians. After all, the creationists were taking his advice⎯advancing the Christian worldview into an area of culture that had felt its absence for decades. But that did not happen. The theologian agreed that it was essential for Christians to defend the fact that God had created, but details such as the age of the Earth merely distracted from this central truth. In other words, how and when God created were relegated to insignificance, given that we could all just agree that He did do it. What a letdown! This great theologian was certainly not alone at the time. He was merely representing the conservative consensus of the day. His approach has been the unfortunate position of many famous professional theologians since the 19th century and remains so today among too many prominent evangelicals. I have heard the same argument (and its minor themes) ever since. It is a favorite cliché of Christians advocating theistic evolution, progressive creation, “Intelligent Design,” or the geological ages and their associated history. They seem to believe that as long as they affirm that God created (even if he used the Big Bang and evolution to get there), then “little” details such as the time and method are not important. Although it initially boggled my mind when I realized that I held a different position from one of my heroes of the faith, I did not change my mind then nor have I since, because I am convinced from Scripture that what I believe is true. Martin Luther’s defense at the Diet of Worms included the observation that it is not safe to go against the Bible and your conscience. When we look closely at questions about creation, we will see that contrary to the popular saying, the devil is often in the lack of details. Why should we accept vague generalities

 

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when God’s own word is so specific? As we will see later, we dare not ignore information that has been provided by the Creator Himself. To see the importance of the biblical answers, we must first see the importance of the questions. Which ones? Writing to Christians, I assume that there is no need to answer the question: “Did God create?” How silly! After all, creation is fundamental to the definition of “god” even for people who are not Christians. Only faithful atheists and people disconnected from reality can talk about “god” apart from creation. Since the physical universe is not infinite, eternal, and unchanging, then it must have been made by something that is—God! Atheists deify the cosmos because it’s their only way out, and their misplaced faith overwhelms all logic. Setting aside the atheist position, current controversies orbit around two burning questions: (1) “When did God create?” and (2) “How did God create?” In spite of all the furor over these two concerns, I believe that the entire debate has been terribly skewed because there is another, more primary question that is needed to set the context for both ‘when?’ and ‘how?’ Like the master ring of Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, this question influences and controls its lesser fellows. And that ruling question is, “why did God create?” Only when we understand the answer to this essential (but often ignored or incorrectly answered) question, will we have the proper context for answering the questions about when and how God created. Furthermore, we will have a much clearer context for evaluating whether questions of “when” and “how” are important or not. The arguments in this book are not scientific, although scientific information is mentioned. They are theological, and since all people are by their very nature theologians (some good, some not), I am confident that many believers can profit from it. May this book enhance God’s name and reputation by its readers understanding and faithfully applying the truths found in these pages! John K. Reed, Ph.D. Evans, Georgia

Introduction 

A Passion for Proper Perspective 

This is a book for saints. No, I do not mean just super Christians, or the spiritual celebrities of our age. Paul called all Christians “saints” (Romans 1:7). Knowing our own hearts and the people around us, our first response to Paul’s assertion might agree with the words of Festus, “Paul… your great learning is driving you insane” (Acts 26:24 NIV). Certainly it is true that Paul’s great learning drove some of the enemies of the gospel insane with rage. It is also true that his great learning drives a few New Testament scholars “insane” each generation. But we recognize the eminent sanity of Paul’s defense of his gospel in Acts and his epistles (which maddened his enemies), even as we recognize his great learning (which continues to frustrate scholars). We remain uncomfortable, however, with the term “saints,” because it implies something about how we should live. Such discomfort might lead us to backpedal to our next excuse; the handy logical fallacy informally entitled, “my, how times have changed!” Paul lived a long time ago. Life was simple then. He never had to put up with the modern stresses that turn saints into sinners. After all, who in Rome ever had to program a video recorder or a cell phone, or make stressful investment decisions in a rapidly changing market? Who has time to be holy? Besides, Paul never knew those people that sit three pews back and one over⎯the ones that drive us crazy every week. But what would Paul have thought about modern life? Would he have called the people sitting in that pew, “saints?” Hmm.... Perhaps it would help to see how our modern “Pauls” operate. Now we

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understand! We can forgive him (with an understanding wink) because we finally get it. Paul was a great pastor. He just wanted to build the self-esteem of the early Christians and help them overcome their inferiority complexes and neuroses with a little less-than-honest encouragement. After all, don’t successful-fast-track-big-and-gettingbigger-church pastors stoop to the weaknesses of their parishioners on occasion? Of course, Paul may not end up being the only one accused of being insane when I suggest that he had something quite different in mind when he wrote to the down and out, poor, despised, sinful Christians of his day. Did he not know their weaknesses? Did he not know their sins? Did he not share their sorrows and suffering? Paul knew all those things and more. After all, how could he not know? He was one of the most persecuted men in human history. Even a cursory reading of his pastoral letters reveals an empathetic heart, full of tenderness and concern. No, what Paul had that so many of us lack was a radically different perspective. Ours is shaped by the techno-playground world where we work, and work hard to obtain money to spend on our pleasures— legitimate or not. Think for a moment on how many things in your life would be different had you lived even 50 years ago. Technology has given us many wonderful things and has provided increasing means to obey the very first mandate in history, exercising dominion over the rest of the Creation (Genesis 1:28). Paul probably understood better than we do that the real question is not intrinsic to technology, but to our own hearts. For example, cell phones can rescue us from a highway breakdown or help coordinate a bank robbery. Another problem that hinders our perspective is that most of us are stuck in deep ruts in our lives and they are usually not “saintly” ruts. They usually are workaholic ruts, shallow family relationship ruts, or even more destructive ones like Internet immorality, chronic dishonesty, or unrelenting arrogance. Only God can uproot us from these and prune us for the true fruitfulness of saints. Yet do we even want Him to? Once sin grabs hold, we find it so easy to downgrade our faith and console ourselves that life in heaven will be just fine without the mansion. All we need is that little two-room shack set on

 

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some heavenly mountain, overlooking a teeming trout stream. The deeper we sink into these ruts, the more foreign Paul’s teachings sound. Paul was not the first to teach truth that sounds strange to our ears; Jesus challenged the perspective of his contemporaries (as He challenges ours today). Think about what He said in the Sermon on the Mount, in his discussion with Nicodemus, or in His many difficult sayings. If we are honest with ourselves, there are many texts that just do not seem to make much sense. Peter, Paul, James, and John heighten our frustration. At times, the entire Bible seems alien to us! However, the problem is ours; the Bible has not become alien—we have. How do we recover intimacy with God’s word? First, we must understand that Paul and the other biblical authors did not let themselves become overwhelmed by the small souls that surrounded them, because they knew a much greater Soul, the risen Lord. Jesus appeared to Paul multiple times, taught him the gospel, and sent him on arguably the greatest mission ever given a mortal man. Paul did not see the suffering servant of Isaiah on the road to Damascus; he saw the Lion of Judah described in Revelation, the mighty rider glowing with indescribable glory, charging forward on His white horse. Paul knew this Jesus. This Jesus told Paul that most of the lowdown, conniving, arrogant, heartless, impure sinners in His churches were saints! And it was not because they had done anything special, but because the powerful Ruler of the universe had. Our salvation does not depend on our inherent goodness or power, but is wholly dependent on God’s power. The task was finished at the Cross, sealed by the resurrection, and will inevitably change a sinner from the inside out, leading Paul to say with complete confidence, “whom He chose… He also glorified” (Romans 8:29-30). While no license to sin (Romans 6:2), anyone who has seen God’s hand in their lives and has learned the confidence of God’s persevering grace in the crucible of life’s blows (“…no one will snatch them out of my hand…” John 10:28), knows a reality far different from all unbelievers, and sadly, many professing Christians. A great salvation has been won; not because of our pitiful small souls, but because of the one great Soul of our Lord Jesus.

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Introduction 

Therefore, we truly are saints! We have many potholes to cross on our race through this life, but God has given us spiritual legs and a clear path to run. What a different purpose there should be to our lives! Instead of our own pleasures, we should give ourselves over to the pleasure of the Lord Jesus, knowing that even our meager obedience and small trust give Him great joy. So what does this issue of “saints” have to do with questions about creation? The same problems underlie both: we must always ask and answer the question of whether we are centered on God or on ourselves. Do we value His truth or our wisdom? After all, the same God Who makes saints made the cosmos. Just as we are being created anew in the image of Jesus Christ to the glory of God, we need to grasp that the entire universe was created to glorify and please God (Revelation 4:11). The Bible clearly teaches that our faith and obedience bring God pleasure. Why should not everything else that He made and maintains bring the same delight? Our own capacity to enjoy the Creation exists only because we are created in His image. We are finite and have a limited aptitude for happiness; God is infinite and has unlimited capacity for pleasure. In fact, it may come as quite a shock to many that God did not create the heavens and Earth, the sea, and all that is in them primarily for the pleasure of man, but for His own—as a manifestation of His infinite power, wisdom, glory, and artistic creativity. He wanted something to shout, “I am God’s Handiwork!” and for everyone who saw it to be amazed. Man existed for thousands of years before the Mars Explorer, the space station, or deep-sea submersibles. All those generations could not imagine the sights that we see today⎯images of deep space, the deep ocean, or the surfaces of other planets⎯vistas that show a hint of what man has yet to see. But God sees. Each cluster galaxy, star, and mote of space debris has been clearly before God’s eyes since he created them. Not only does He see, but He enjoys the view more than you can possibly imagine. Just think for a moment of all the things that God sees that you do not: the sunrise when you sleep in, the deer feeding in your field when you are busy elsewhere, the bass swimming

 

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beneath the surface of the pond, and the dewdrops on the spider’s web hidden behind the bushes. That is not to say that man cannot enjoy the Creation. We were made its lords by the Lord and He has given us the privilege of seeking out its hidden things. Even after being cursed by sin, death, and decay, God’s handiwork still amazes hardened sinners. For example, sailors recovering from a drunken spree sigh at a sunset at sea or quail before the power of hurricanes. Though climbers trust their lives to man’s technology when scaling mountains, they will still gasp at a sheer thousand-foot escarpment and revel in the vista from the top. Tourists who never darken a church door flock to see the Grand Canyon and callous children still delight in the wonder of their backyards. These are but a sample of many wonders of this stained world. Imagine what it will look like after its promised renovation! Is there a perspective that can provide a meeting place for God’s pleasure and ours? The wise men of the 17th century Westminster Assembly thought so. They understood that Paul’s perspective balanced these two realities perfectly. As their spiritual children, we need to reacquire it. Seeming to anticipate our modern frailties, they made this issue the very first question in their catechism. Q1. What is the chief end of man? A1. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. In other words, the first thing that they wanted their children to learn was that we exist to glorify God. What they did next was breathtakingly ridiculous from our sophisticated, modern point of view: they cemented the concept of human pleasure to glorifying the Creator. Note that the question is singular, “chief end.” Then note that the answer is plural. Does this mean that they were great theologians and poor grammarians? No! It means that they understood that there was an inextricable link between glorifying God and enjoying God. What a contrast from our modern concept that fulfillment is found in sinful pleasures and that glorifying God means gritting one’s teeth on Earth and hoping for bliss in Heaven.

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Introduction 

How can we glorify and enjoy God? Faith, worship, rejoicing, obedience—all of these are verbal shorthand for a Christian life that travels both paths. But we need to move beyond the vocabulary and into everyday experience. I would suggest that one very simple way to both glorify and enjoy God is to stand up for His reputation when He chooses to not intervene directly. Think of your best friend, your spouse, your child, or your parents. Would you sit quietly and listen to some stranger run them down? Of course not! Many of us would vehemently defend the reputation of those we love. We even become indignant over insults directed at our favorite football team or even politicians we do not know! Yet, how many times do we hear God’s reputation besmirched and allow fear or apathy to shut our mouths? Responding to defend God’s reputation is one right that all believers share. But we need to be more than just reactive; Jesus called on us to be “wise as serpents” (Matthew 10:16). Being wise requires us to think strategically for the kingdom. For example, we know that Satan is our enemy, and however much he wants to be God, he is not. He does not possess the intrinsic attributes of his Creator. Among these deficiencies is omnipresence. Satan is limited in his scope of operation; God is not. Thus, as we peer back over time, we see trends in the evil that has attacked the church, but these trends show a dependence on time or place. In other words, we are in the middle of a war, but battle does not rage on every possible front all the time. While on guard, we no longer battle relentlessly against Gnosticism, for example. Each generation seems to have its own special challenges that demand the application of the Spirit and of truth. A smorgasbord of evil confronts us in our day, but we begin to show a little “serpent wisdom” when we see that many are linked to underlying ideas. A foundation of many modern evils is the denial of God’s honor and fame, manifested by the dismissal of His work of creation and of His universal judgment in the Flood.1 Look at it from the pagan point 1

 Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has been at the forefront of identifying many  of these connections. His book, Evolution: The Lie, has a good summary of the  connections between abortion, homosexuality, etc., and evolution. For those

 

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of view. If there is no God who created and exercises sovereignty over the cosmos, then it is easy to believe that we belong to nature. If one belongs to nature and not to God, then one has a degree of autonomy, an excuse to do evil. And if there is no fear of judgment, then there is no need for the restraint that existed among even the unrighteous in centuries past. Both creation and judgment are inseparable from attacks on the reliability of the Bible, the traditional authority for both positions. When the news is bad, shoot the messenger. We realize that there are a number of hard passages in the Bible. Yet, those passages are a small minority compared to the complete volume of the book, and usually they are difficult because they are minor asides and not crucial to the main point. We also know that individual interpretation can be mistaken, but that is one reason God usually gives us decades to study and correct our initial immature impressions. It is informative that the vast majority of attacks on the reliability of Scripture focus on Genesis. Please stop, place a bookmark here, and take a few minutes to read Genesis 1-11. Do you see long passages requiring excruciating exegesis? Do you see hermeneutical challenges that would make a theologian pull his hair out? For the most part we do not: the chapters are simple and straightforward historical narrative. So we are left with a relatively simple narrative that has been folded, mutilated, and spindled into everything from poetry to astrophysics because God’s plain words are recast into some “Genesis Code” of learned opinions as men attempt to reconcile God’s word with their own lofty knowledge. How did we get here? What has caused many Christians to throw away the clear content of these chapters and settle on the maxim of modern theology that “it doesn’t really matter how God created (using evolution) or when God created (over billions of years), as long as we know He did create.” Does it matter? Let me put it this way; if I can demonstrate that this “creation confusion” is an affront to the honor of God, would you interested  in  greater  detail,  many  good  articles  by  Dr.  Jerry  Bergman  have  appeared  over  the  years  in  the  Creation  Research  Society  Quarterly.  The  CRS  website is provided at the end of this book. 

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be ready to let it matter? For the more I study, the more I am convinced that compromise on this issue is akin to living in the 16th century, having someone slap you across the face with his gauntlets, and then deciding that it is not a mortal insult because the blow was not all that hard. Actually, it is much worse; it is God Who has been slapped across the face, not his children. It is not our glory and personal reputation on the line—it is God’s! Furthermore, if the origin and history of the universe are related closely to God’s honor, then we need to be less cavalier about shrugging off the details and less concerned with our intellectual respectability in the world. How and when God created are part and parcel of His grand act and the record He provided. Both His works and His revelation of them cannot help but be closely connected to the honor He rightfully deserves (Revelation 4:11). Genesis tells not only of creation, but also of judgment. The nature and magnitude of the Flood speak directly to God’s ability, right, and glory in judgment. Men outside of Christ should tremble at the thought of a final judgment, but if they discount the evidence of past judgment, then they more easily console themselves that it will not happen in the future. The last judgment is the hope of any true Christian. On that basis alone, we should be eager to defend the Flood. It gives us hope that the promises of final justice are not vain. There we will see God’s justice and mercy revealed together in all of His glory. What better day could come for any Christian? What more terrifying day for those apart from Him? Later in this book I will argue that we cannot fail to say something about God’s character in whatever position is taken on how and when God created. There is no neutral answer! These “minor” questions are in one sense no less important than the fact of creation, not on account of any logical rigor, but because everything we think about creation and God’s providential control of history touches on His honor. Any sin against His glory is a terrible thing. So anyone who desires the honor and glory of God should delight in all aspects of His creating and sustaining work⎯just as He does. Furthermore, because God could have filled volumes with esoteric details about creation,

 

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does it not stand to reason that each detail of the sparse content actually revealed in Genesis might assume greater importance? Nothing is more important in the entire universe than God’s glory. We who are saints of the Lord Jesus Christ must not fail to see that issues of creation impinge on God’s eternal glory. If we can see that, and if we can capture Paul’s God-centered perspective, then one day we will rejoice to see the risen Christ in all of His eternal splendor and, wonder of wonders, He will acknowledge and reward our concern for His name. Think it over. Pray it over. If you need help, read the Bible’s prayers. All of the best prayers throughout Scripture petition God not because the supplicants think they deserve His help, but purely on the basis of His reputation and glory. Would that we could think and pray in that manner: our first petition “…hallowed be Thy name;” and our last, “For Thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever.”

 

Chapter 1 

Boundaries 

A famous adage tells us that history is destiny. Another tells us we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past if we remain ignorant of it. The truth in this folk wisdom should give any person reason to understand the past. Christians should have an even greater motivation for (and appreciation of) history because it is the stage upon which God has shown Himself in works of providence. How many times does the Bible command us to remember His previous works to bolster our weak faith? How many times does God rest some promise or comforting word upon what He did before⎯often hundreds of years earlier? In light of this biblical emphasis, it seems that wise-as-serpent Christians should understand how God has worked on the stage of time. Furthermore, we can better appreciate the nature of our present conflicts by realizing how they have unrolled across the ages. Since few have the time for an exhaustive study of the history of evolution and historical geology, let me try to provide a short summary and some references2 for further reading. The Reformation marked a recovery of trust in the Bible and the consequent stripping away of the extraneous, quasi-biblical dogma of hundreds of years. Theologians began to emphasize textual studies and gave birth to what we now consider standard exegetical and hermeneutical strategies. As a result, people read biblical history as 2

 For further reading see Morris (1984), Mortenson (2004), Reed (2000; 2001),  Rudwick (2005; 2008), and Stark (2001; 2003). 

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history, and until the 19th century most accepted the Genesis record as factual, literal, and accurate. For example, the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) of 1646 uses language very similar to Exodus 20:11 when it states that God created “in the space of six days…” (WCF 4-1). Did they share our modern understanding that “days” could be hundreds of millions of years? No! Our best current understanding of the original intent of this phrase indicates that the divines intended the phrase to mean six 24-hour days.3 But the renewed biblical consensus did not survive the 18th and 19th century anti-Christian revolution inappropriately named The Enlightenment. Christian thinkers were pushed out of the cultural limelight in favor of men like Voltaire [1694-1778], Rousseau [17121778], Comte [1798-1851], Hume [1711-1776], Kant [1724-1804], and Hegel [1770-1831]. Revolution was in the air, politically and culturally. It would be foolish to think that science was immune from these societal influences. By the early 1800s, a new worldview of Naturalism had emerged from its larval camouflage of Deism and started a cultural conquest that haunts us today. Understanding the importance of history, acolytes of this new worldview attacked Christianity at the points of God’s greatest historical manifestations of power and interest in men: Creation, the Flood, and the Incarnation. In addition to the numerous “Jesus heresies” of that time, Naturalism spurred vicious attacks against Genesis. The new science of geology successfully questioned the catastrophic (and therefore rapid) formation of the rock record, and inserted a vast “prehistory” accessible only to science. If the rocks took millions of years to form, then there was no Flood. Genesis was then of dubious historical value. In a vain attempt to save Genesis, the church propagated various compromise theories of multiple catastrophes, local floods, and even a “tranquil” flood that left no geologic evidence, marking its retreat before Naturalism. 3

 Although there have been claims that the Westminster divines left open the  possibility  of  long  ages  in  their  use  of the  biblical  language  that God  created  “in the space of six days,” this claim appears without merit to the author after  reviewing Hall (1999). 

 

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Naturalism acknowledges its own revolution. Modern geologists recognize the discovery of “deep time” as one of the most significant events in the history of science. The geological revolution culminated in the works of Sir Charles Lyell [1797-1875], a lawyer and amateur geologist that many consider the father of modern geology. Lyell advocated the doctrine of uniformitarianism, claiming that present day geological processes acting over long periods of time could explain the entire rock record. As a result of his work, Lyell became a science celebrity and a leader of the 19th century scientific establishment.4 He also became a friend and mentor of Charles Darwin. His Principles of Geology was Darwin’s companion on the famous voyage of the Beagle. Once the Mosaic account of the Flood had been successfully challenged, the stage was set to attack the established concept of creation of fixed species. Although the Genesis “kind” is not equivalent to our understanding of “species,” this incorrect view was popular at that time. The biography of Charles Darwin [1809-1882] is well known. The now-famous voyage on the Beagle occurred between 1831 and 1836, and publication of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life came in 1859. Darwin completed his life’s work by publishing The Descent of Man in 1871, a book that asserted the evolutionary development of man, a subject deemed too controversial for 1859. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection stirred up great turmoil in both secular culture and the church. Darwin was never a vigorous public advocate of evolution, but his ideas were championed by men who were: T.H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Haeckel, and Asa Gray. These men falsely presented the issue as one of enlightened science vs. outmoded religion. This lie, though widely accepted, was repudiated by none other than avowed Marxist and Harvard Paleontologist, the late Dr. Stephen J. Gould [1941-2002]. Or as Dr. Rodney Stark (2003, p. 123), the noted sociologist, stated: 4

 Many books have documented the history of geology. For more information  from  a  Christian  viewpoint,  see  Mortenson  (2004),  and  from  a  secular  viewpoint, see Gould (1997); Rudwick (1985; 2005; 2008). 

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Chapter 1  The reason that we didn’t know the truth concerning these matters is that the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith. From Thomas Hobbes through Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, false claims about religion and science have been used as weapons in the battle to “free” the human mind from the “fetters of faith.”

But the propaganda was successful at the time and Darwinian evolution and uniformitarian geology soon became the dogma of modern scientific education, advocated by the professional scientific class—a group that has wielded undeniable cultural influence over the last 200 years. Following the public relations coup of the Scopes Trial,5 the evolutionary establishment became so firmly entrenched that the Darwinian Centennial celebration in 1959 was primarily an exercise in self-congratulation by the intellectual elite of the day. Only in recent decades have Christians begun to see the full fruit of evolutionism and uniformitarianism. Social sciences, economics, religion, and history have been profoundly influenced by Naturalism. Many of the most disturbing aspects of our culture, whether social or political, find some direct or indirect justification through evolution extrapolated beyond biology. In the present day, there is no excuse for Christians not seeing the oversized neon sign pointing to the worldview of Naturalism that lies behind its threadbare façade of science. Sadly, many are still entranced by the veneer and see no evil, hear no evil, and therefore do not speak out against it. But some have begun to challenge Naturalism and today’s revived opposition is not unique. There have always been opponents to evolution and uniformitarianism, and although the fact is often ignored, they have commonly come from the scientific community 5

  Popular  presentations  of  the  Scopes  Trial  are  breathtaking  distortions  of  truth. A comparison of the Hollywood version, Inherit the Wind (probably the  only  version  most  Americans  have  seen),  manages  to  misrepresent  almost  every major event and personality tied to the trial. For more information, see  http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/2467.asp. 

 

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rather than the seminaries and pulpits. Following in the steps of 19th century scientists like Lord Kelvin and Louis Agassiz, Dr. Henry Morris (engineer) and Dr. John Whitcomb (paleontologist-turnedtheologian) triggered the modern creation movement with the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood. By the end of the 20th century, Darwin’s victory was being eroded by an increasing awareness of scientific flaws in evolution and in the presence of the worldview behind it. The tried and true “religion vs. science” argument has become outmoded, and it is a sign of desperation when it is advanced. Modern creationism has attracted attention because of its emphasis on a scientific rebuttal of evolutionism and uniformitarianism—a method that would prove impossible if the issue truly was one of science vs. religion. Unfortunately, this style has led to friction between creation scientists and some professional theologians. Some theologians have tended to be suspicious of the association between creationists and fundamentalist denominations and, sadly, many hesitate to associate with those the academic establishment has labeled “anti-intellectual.” None of the mainline denominations officially support the youngearth creation position, and many conservative denominations are either openly ambivalent about the issue or engaged in hot debate. This ambivalence may be attributed to a desire to maintain a strong intellectual position in the culture. This might explain why various alternative positions (e.g., theistic evolution, progressive creation, local flood, old-earth uniformitarianism, etc.) have been popular with the academic leaders in evangelical and reformed denominations, even though they are much less popular with the lay membership and generally scorned by the militant Naturalists. Origins and Earth history have become hot topics over the past decades, and many Christians are rightfully curious about them. Unfortunately, their curiosity has been frustrated by the smorgasbord of answers provided within the church. Confusion inside the church serves no one but the enemy, but there seems to be no easy resolution within the current confines of the present knotty debate. That is one reason for this book; it is sometimes easier to simplify by making sure the questions are right than by chasing answers to the

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wrong ones. Wisdom requires that we properly frame the questions before attempting the answers. So I want to follow that course of wisdom. Concurrent with this concern is my conviction that the terms of the current debate are not fully consistent with historical Christian theology and that the two must be aligned. Before we pursue the proper arrangement of questions about creation, we need to remember that there are foundational principles that Christians should observe whenever they turn their attention to any dispute or battle in this world. Paul warned us to arm ourselves for battle, and recognize (in spite of appearances) that we do not war against other men, but against the forces of Satan. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil… Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:10-11; 14-17).

In all of this armament, there is one offensive weapon—God’s word, called the sword of the Spirit. How do we wield this sword? I would suggest at least five basic lessons that we must master to become expert swordsmen against our enemy. These principles reflect the best thinking of historic Christianity, and are referenced from the 17th century Westminster Confession of Faith. 1. The Authority of Scripture. Although implied throughout its entire discussion about the Bible, the confession explicitly states: The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the word of God (WCF 1-4).

There is one aspect of evolutionary thought that is correct: there are hierarchies. Although evolutionists limit them to physical nature,

 

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and define them in terms like “order and complexity,” Jews and Christians knew about hierarchies long before modern science. The real hierarchy is one of being; God is at the top, man is below God, and the rest of nature is below man. God is unique (Isaiah 46:9; Exodus 15:11). There is no one with His attributes, character, and glory. There is no other source of truth (John 17:17; Hebrews 6:18). We know from our own bitter experiences that men do not share this attribute; we lie easily, having learned it from the Father of Lies in the garden. Otherwise, why would Paul have to command: Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Colossians 3:9-10).

If we should not lie because we are being remade in Christ’s image, then it stands to reason that: (1) natural man does lie, (2) that Christ loves the truth and does not lie, and (3) that we should try to emulate Him. We manifest these in a love for God’s truth—a truth found with certainty only in the Bible, which carries the weight of His authority. Therefore another hierarchy exists⎯this time in knowledge. God’s word is superior to man’s knowledge and wisdom, just as its Author is superior to man. 2. The Sufficiency of Scripture. First we find bad news⎯all of the means of knowing about God outside of the Bible are not sufficient. Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will which is necessary unto salvation… (WCF 1-1).

But in the Bible we find: The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is wither expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture; unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men (WCF 1-6).

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These words erect a thick hedge around the Bible with regard to those who want to find new meanings aided by “new revelations” or by the “traditions of men.” Since these words were penned in the 17th century, I am sure that their authors did not have evolution in mind when they wrote them, but what better words could be said against those who would force the Bible to fit the latest scientific fads? Such an approach is a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture, and has proven to be a dangerous precedent. Christian waffling about the Bible with regards to origins have set an unwanted precedent. That lack of trust in its sufficiency has encouraged abortion advocates and homosexuals to cite the Bible to support their sins⎯those that it actually condemns! 3. The Perspicuity of Scripture. Perspicuity is a fancy term which means simply that the most important parts of the Bible are written in such a way as to be clear to anyone who follows the proper rules of biblical interpretation. The corollary is that when we see portions of the Bible that are crystal clear, then we need to consider them with care.6 All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all, yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly and openly propounded in some place of the Scripture or other… (WCF 1-7).

Now you might be tempted to say, “Wait just a minute, Dr. Reed. I can read. This paragraph of the WCF talks about salvation, not creation.” Let’s look at that. Broaden the context just a little more. What is involved in salvation? First we must believe that God exists and rewards those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). Our most basic relationship with God, even prior to salvation, depends on our recognizing Him as the Creator and Sustainer of each one of us. Paul preached the gospel with this truth in mind to the pagans in Athens: The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 6

 Sproul, R.C. (1977). 

 

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And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28).

Paul used the message about God as the Creator to lay a foundation for evangelism. Furthermore, salvation demands that we deal with the issue of sin and its accompanying judgment of death. Where did sin and death originate? The Bible teaches that Adam fell from his original state into sin, incurring the wrath and judgment of death, and that he passed that sinful nature down through each generation to every human being born of a man. Where do we learn about Adam and his sin? From Genesis 2 & 3, those “non-historical” parts of the book. If Genesis is not history, then how can we account for original sin? And if we cannot, how can we come to repentance, and on to salvation? 4. The Scripture Interprets Itself. When we find a difficult passage (and I don’t think that Genesis 1-11 fall into that category), how do we interpret it? This is precisely the issue that the crucial questions about creation hang upon. You know as well as I that the interpretive strategy of non-literal theories of Genesis relies on the use of modern science to provide an interpretive framework for Genesis. But is that proper? The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture, is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly (WCF 1-9).

This is a powerful refutation of compromise positions on Genesis in two ways. First, it says that some are looking for clarity in all the wrong places. Second, it forces proponents to deal with many clear texts outside of Genesis. For example, the Fourth Commandment tells us:

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Chapter 1  For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Exodus 20:11).

Moses uses the six days of God’s creating as the basis for the Hebrew week. Is it just an unwieldy analogy? How can it be when Moses, a rather astute man, able to master the intricate wisdom of ancient Egypt, follows up the Sabbath command with the straightforward statement above? How could he have made it any plainer? Likewise, Jesus referred to Adam and Eve in his justification of marriage (Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:8) just as Paul did (I Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 5:31). Furthermore, Peter (II Peter 2:5) explicitly taught a universal Flood as an example of God’s judging the world. Even more plainly, Peter stated in the next chapter: …knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (II Peter 3:3-7).

This passage teaches several important facts. First, in the last days, there will be men who will not only disbelieve the Genesis account, but will actively scorn it. They will argue for continuity of terrestrial processes. Peter’s prophecy is fulfilled, at least in part, by modern uniformitarianism, which asserts that geologic processes continue in similar manners and rates as they have from the very beginning, thereby disallowing the possibility of a creation or a global flood from the very outset. But, as Peter stated, they have overlooked the facts about creation and the Flood readily available in the Bible. I believe that when Peter said they “overlook” creation and the Flood, that he said the same thing Paul did in Romans 1—that they deliberately overlook these truths.

 

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Finding an artificial compatibility with Genesis and modern geology and biology does not solve the problem; rather it creates a whole new set of them, each one related to multiple “problematic” texts that repeatedly reference the events of Genesis. Take a poke at Genesis 1, and like a fly stuck on flypaper, you find nothing but sticky footing wherever you turn—a tangle of numerous other passages that must also be “reinterpreted.” Freedom comes only by bowing to the authority of truth as God presented it, not as the intellectual elite would wish it. 5. The Bible Alone is Final in Religious Disputes. This brings us to our final point of spiritual swashbuckling, and drives a wooden spike straight into the heart of the interpretive schemes of modern compromisers. The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture (WCF 1-10).

In other words, crucial questions about creation must be put to the test of the Bible, not to: (1) modern theories, (2) the authority of Darwin, or (3) church councils or leaders that have affirmed evolution and an old age for the Earth—or those that affirm the opposite. Even the most learned opinions of fallible theologians must be subject to Scripture. I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that if these historic rules of handling the Bible were followed for Genesis today, that the Church would be standing where it ought to be—in direct opposition to the very positions that she now so shamelessly embraces. Let’s apply these principles. Christians should derive their certainty about the world around them from God’s word. They do not derive all of their knowledge from the Bible, but only the propositions of Scripture lay a sure foundation to undergird and support our investigations in the many branches of human knowledge. For this reason alone, the Bible is superior to any other knowledge, just as these five principles assume or assert its superiority. Whenever origins (or

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any other issue) is being discussed, if you ever hear someone changing the plain meaning of the Bible to accommodate human wisdom, then you may safely assume that they are in error in some fashion, no matter how wise or scientific they sound. What about science? Let me be clear that I am not trying to denigrate science; otherwise I would not have made it my own career! I am simply trying to prevent it from trespassing where it does not belong and carrying a burden it cannot bear. The arrogance of modern Naturalists requires that we deal with their arguments. For instance, we have been told far too many times that “the Bible is not a textbook of science.” That fatuous cliché reveals only foolishness in not carefully considering what the Bible is. A more interesting question would be, “Could we have modern science without the Bible?” I believe that answer is negative.7 For example, in 1277, church leaders gathered at the Council of Paris to debate a number of issues, including the question of whether God could create a vacuum. Now this may seem like a silly question to us, but these men were deadly serious and at that time the question was a crucial issue. During that period of church history, Scholastic philosophers, epitomized by Aquinas, had rediscovered the writings of the pagan philosopher, Aristotle, and found him to be remarkably congruent with certain aspects of their faith. Their problem was that Aristotle did not have a biblical worldview, and therefore diverged from the Bible in key areas—especially in the area of creation. Church leaders were forced into the difficult choice of affirming either the superiority of the Bible or that of Aristotle (sounds like our own day, when put that way). Fortunately for us, those men chose to affirm that God could and did create freely, unconstrained by any greater rational principle, and they recognized that Jehovah was not Aristotle’s “unmoved mover.” Out of this decision grew the eventual liberation of thought from Aristotle’s errors, and as a result, science flowered in the succeeding centuries. And this happened because the church trusted God’s revelation above the wisdom of men! 7

 A point made many times, e.g., Glover (1984), Reed et al. (2004), and Stark  (2003).  

 

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Like the 13th century fathers, Christians today face a dangerous trap: the assumed infallibility of the experts. In addition, thanks to modern relativism, we face one that they did not: the assumed infallibility of the majority. We live in a knowledge-based society; in which great respect is accorded to those familiar with the latest technology or who belong to the intellectual elite. Our grandparents would tell us that at one time pastors and teachers were included in this group, though most don’t seem to think so today. And this intellectual elite is not just found in secular universities; often they reside in the church, commonly in the ranks of the seminary professor, the professional theologian, or the charismatic celebrity pastor. It has to be one of the most frustrating feelings in the world to find yourself as just a regular Christian, at theological odds with one of these experts. Fortunately, we might recall a similar situation occurred during the 1500s. The professional theologians decried the “ranting” of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli—men whose teaching would later become normative as Protestant theology. One reason for the Reformation’s effectiveness was that ordinary people found that they could read and understand the Bible. The only essential interpreter was the Holy Spirit. Once they began to study the texts, they found most passages so clear that they did not need priests, scholars, and councils to interpret their meaning. Certainly there are difficult passages in the Bible that require the study of professional theologians, and just as certainly those theologians provide valuable depth to our knowledge and understanding. But anyone enlightened by God’s grace can understand the essentials of faith presented in the Bible. Likewise, I believe that the crucial questions about creation are relatively easy to grasp compared to many other passages. Otherwise, I would leave the writing of this book to an elite, professional theologian! Next time that someone tells you that “everyone knows” that the Flood was a local event, or that “prominent scientists” say that creation took billions of years of evolution, just remember that the Puritans used to say that life was like a play; we are the actors and there is only one person in the audience—God. If we are living to please Him, then the opinions of men should not hinder our performance.

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But if we start playing a role for other men, then we have lost sight of the real object of our efforts.

 

Chapter 2 

The Foundational Question   about Creation 

When I was a young boy, one of my bedtime habits was listening to my Mom read. Of the many great stories that she introduced, some became repeated favorites. Several of these were found in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. My personal favorite was the tale relating how the elephant got its trunk—a story about insatiable curiosity. Insatiable curiosity! Kipling must have known children. The young are all insatiably curious and the wise retain it well into old age. Our desire to understand and explain things around us is part of the character that God knew would be needed for the lords of His creation. The Importance of Asking Why  Curiosity is a universal human characteristic. Even the famous philosopher Aristotle [384-322 BC] wrote about it when he identified wisdom with the ability to answer the question, “why?” In his book, Physics (II-3 194b18), he stated, Knowledge is the object of our inquiry, and men do not think they know a thing till they have grasped the ‘why’ of it.

Those of us with children recognize that answering “why?” is seldom simple. Aristotle also recognized that and stated that “why?” was not really answered unless it was answered in four distinct ways. These became his famous four causes; the material, efficient, formal, and final.

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If we were left with nothing but our own wisdom, we could probably not improve on Aristotle. But we have something far better and wiser⎯the very word of God. God not only answers many of our “why” questions but also asks a few of His own, questions that we would never think to ask at all. At the end of Romans 16, Paul praises God for both asking and answering questions kept hidden for millennia. Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen (Romans 16:25-27).

The Bible reveals hidden things and also clarifies things that we only partially understand apart from it. For example, apart from the Bible, a man may be able to deduce the existence and some of the attributes of God with logic and reason, but the resulting portrait is a child’s stick figure compared to the richly textured and hued masterwork revealed by the Master Himself. In fact, our forefathers were bold enough to assert that there was no issue of life or faith that the Bible did not touch in some way. Their view of Scripture was higher than ours; and so, their knowledge was deeper. Consider one of the most famous sermons ever preached, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Stop and think. Where would you go in the Bible to find a passage to preach this sermon? I can think of a few texts, but have to admit that I would never choose Deuteronomy 32:35, “Their foot shall slide in due time…” (KJV). If we are honest, we would admit that we consider this a very obscure verse, but Jonathan Edwards’ firm grasp on the Bible recommended it as quite suitable for his preaching. Would that we had the same trust in the complete reliability of God’s word and the accompanying depth of knowledge possessed by such men! Though the Bible does not tell us everything about every subject, our forefathers were right. It does teach sufficiently on all

 

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matters of life and faith. Our inability to see those answers says more about our deficiency of study than about the sufficiency of the Bible. If the Bible is sufficient for matters of faith and life, then it certainly is sufficient to tell us about creation. God’s works are often summed up into the categories of creation and providence. If the Creation is one of God’s two great works, then it stands to reason that God is the best possible source of information and that He has provided it. He has chosen to reveal information about that magnificent work in the reality of the cosmos and in His word. Sensation and detail are given to us in the physical reality of what God made, but rock-solid truth is found in the Bible, not in nature. Do you remember the categories of questions from elementary school: what, when who, how, where, and why? Each of these can be asked of the creation event, and as we have already discussed, most current disputes about creation focus on the two questions: (1) how did God create? and (2) when did God create? But as interesting as these debates are, I believe that sound theology requires us to focus instead on another category first: why did God create? This is the foundational question about creation. Why God created is important because it reveals the nature and attributes of the Creator. Our modern world has it exactly backwards: it desires knowledge of creation independent of the Creator. Christians understand the benefits of knowing about creation, but they are subordinate to the much greater benefits of wisdom and joy that come from what is revealed about God. We always seek to know the motives of our peers because we then can clearly understand their words and actions. How much more should we want to understand the motives and character of Almighty God? While the church squabbles about science, we miss the point that the best and most profound answers are those that reveal the Creator behind the cosmos. As with any element of truth, there is also a fringe benefit. Once we understand more about God by grasping why He bothered creating at all, we have a theological template for answering the subordinate questions “how?” and “when?” He created. Before we dive into the “why?” of creation, let’s look a little more at our possible sources for answering that question. We have two

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options: God’s word and man’s wisdom. While man’s wisdom can be informative, it requires the normative framework of God’s word. Many would advance man’s wisdom outside those limits, using clichés such as “the Bible is not a textbook of science.” However, they appear to ignore that it is the only reliable “textbook” of ancient history, the only reliable “textbook” of the very beginning, and the only reliable “textbook” of the Creator. Our modern emphasis on science also hinders the realization that the description of unique past events is history, not science. Most of the Bible is history. Much of the rest is an explanation of what that history means in God’s eyes. So if we want to understand the past, origins, and the Originator, then we first need to understand the Bible. Genesis as the Beginning of History  A complete history must begin at the beginning. Only an account of origins can anchor the rest of history to its beginning. Even mythmakers understand this; for example, J.R.R. Tolkien started The Silmarillion with a creation story, and C.S. Lewis included a creation account of Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew. If you were to read through the book of Genesis without bias, you would see that same connection: an origin narrative that ties together and explains nature, life, man, sin, judgment and redemption. Are not these the great themes of the rest of the Bible? They certainly are pathways that lead to a greater knowledge of God. Genesis is not just a seamless history; it is the foundation for the other 65 books. It anchors the major themes of all Scripture in their beginnings, so that as we read about them later, we understand how they came to be. If the early parts of Genesis are not true, then the subsequent stories are just that—stories. Those who attempt to impose an exegetical barrier between Genesis 1-11 (poetry, allegory, etc.) and Genesis 12-50 (narrative history) reveal their preexisting prejudices more than their theological ability. The narrative unfolds from one chapter to the next with no contradiction.8 8

 Kelly (2003). 

 

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The foundational question of why God created is framed by the big themes of Genesis. Only if we are willing to see all of Genesis as history will those themes come alive. Sin, death, judgment, and redemption are super-glued into history through a record of the origin of the universe, life, man, and through the Fall and its consequences. The necessity of Jesus cannot be understood apart from Genesis. The Fall explains God’s terrible predicament that He resolved in the Incarnation; how He could preserve His holiness and justice and at the same time save a sin-cursed creation. The complex interweaving of God’s justice and mercy that meet at the Cross is prefigured in the Genesis stories of Adam, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Truncating the patriarchs truncates the story of God’s justice and mercy. Jesus came to save us from the consequences of sin. If we cannot trust the historical account of Adam’s sin, then we cannot explain the necessity of Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection. If we cannot trust the historical account of the Flood, then our understanding of God’s wrath is diminished, which in turn diminishes our gratitude for Jesus’ death and resurrection. Only knowledge of God’s terrible wrath and judgment against sin can allow us to make sense of Paul’s urgency in Romans 3 to proclaim that God is both just and the justifier of those who are in Christ. Although a little thought will lead us to informed speculation about why God might have created, we need not sort through an infinite multitude of reasons as if they were competing on a level playing field. Instead, there is one overarching theme that provides organization and unity to each purpose of God—no matter how small—and knits them together into one grand and glorious tapestry. That unifying purpose is God Himself. Creation manifests His character and attributes, brings honor and glory to His name, and affords Him delight and pleasure beyond any ecstasy that we can possibly imagine. Jonathan Edwards Explains  As with many truths of right doctrine, this one is to be found in the past work of the giants of faith, and is particularly clear in the work

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of Jonathan Edwards, the great American preacher and thinker of the 1700s. He is best known for his role in the Great Awakening in New England and for his biography of the missionary, David Brainard. But he left a library of books and shorter works that delight and challenge scholars to this day. Among them was a short work entitled, A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. This work makes a compelling argument that God created for Himself: He is the ultimate and chief purpose behind creation. Other reasons, especially those that we see aimed at our benefit, are minor threads in the tapestry of God’s honor and glory. A summary of Edwards’ work is appended at the end of this chapter and the complete text can be found at a library or on the Internet. I strongly recommend that you find his dissertation and read it carefully. In the few pages of this work, Edwards noted that God holds Himself in higher esteem than anything else, that God loves Himself more than anything else, and that God’s glory and honor are paramount above everything else. Once we are able to accept this thoroughly biblical perspective, it is clear that creation is from God, through God, and for God in its ultimate sense. Edwards defended this emphasis by noting the total freedom of God in creating—the very issue that the Church fathers addressed in the 1277 Council of Paris. It was certainly not as if God created because His happiness required us, or anything else other than Himself! Edwards then delved deep; reasoning that God’s attributes are more glorified if they are used. Therefore, as a part of God’s very nature, His attributes overflow into wondrous works such as creation, providence, and redemption. Like the sun sending out its rays, God’s attributes radiate from His being without any diminution of His essence. Having a high regard for Scripture, Edwards peppered his thesis with supporting passages of the Bible. All of the Creation brings glory to God. From the farthest galaxy to the miniature grandeur of subatomic structures, all things reflect His handiwork, showing His power, wisdom, creativity, and goodness. At the beginning in Genesis, we hear the creative refrain, “And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). Edwards has helped us see that “good” in God’s eyes would be that which glorifies Him. After

 

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creating man, God pronounced His creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Clearly, being made in God’s image made man the apex of the physical creation. That does not denigrate the rest of creation; it simply exalts man as having a special ability to bring glory to God. Created in God’s likeness, only man will be able to eternally grow in knowledge and unity with God to the praise of His glory. Man’s original purpose was to glorify God by holding dominion over a perfect creation. When God created man: …God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth (Genesis 1:28).

Man was given a place as God’s personal representative on Earth. If Adam had not sinned, then this would have resulted in great and increasing good to the rest of the created order. As it was, his sin had just the opposite effect. God exercised judgment on both man and man’s kingdom: And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Paul confirms the effects of this curse in Romans 8:21, telling us that the Creation is in bondage to decay, a clear reference to Genesis 3. John adds his weight in Revelation 21, when he states that in his vision the old heaven and Earth have passed away—both are remade without sin, and in them we will see what God intended from the beginning. No sin; no curse; no sorrow. But Adam’s sin raises a question about the present ability of the Creation to glorify its Creator. Clearly God was angry with Adam and Eve and punished them, their offspring, and their world. If the Creation itself was cursed because of this terrible event, how then can we be sure that God still delights in what He made and derives glory from it? Did sin destroy that possibility? If it did, we would expect God to say so later in the Bible. After all, sin was (and is) present and

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God hates sin; the cosmos was cursed on account of sin; God visited a destructive judgment on the face of the Earth during the Flood; and He has promised its ultimate, fiery cleansing. It is easy to see how one could conclude that God was unhappy with what He had made. But too many places in the Bible tell us that God still derives glory and delight even from a marred creation. We only have to look at ourselves. Our redemption in Christ (at His great expense) proves that God takes pleasure in us. We are called into his glory (II Peter 1:3), being recreated in His image (Colossians 3:10), and are called living stones, a holy priesthood, and spiritual houses (I Peter 2:4-5). We have the sure and certain promise that God’s work in us will be completed (Romans 8:30). If sinful man can still glorify God, then consider the relative status of man and the rest of creation. Creation was cursed because of Adam, but it was Adam who fell into sin. Remember the story of Uzzah and the Ark in II Samuel 6:5-10? Uzzah was struck dead when he put out his hand to keep the Ark from falling into the mud. Why? Could it be that God considered the hand of a sinful man to be a greater source of pollution than mud? If so, that helps us understand the relative guilt that we bear for sin, and helps us to see that if God still derives glory from sinful people, He also gets it from His cosmos. God confirms His ongoing delight in a cursed creation. Psalm 19 tells us that, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky proclaims His handiwork.” I Samuel 2:8 has Hannah praising God for his wonderful works because they bring glory to His name. Among these she states, “For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.” Clearly, Hannah considered creation as something that rightly glorified God. Hannah’s voice will eventually be joined, thousands of years later, by ours and by those of all our fellow servants in God’s throne room: Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created (Revelation 4:11).

Stop for a moment and pick up your Bible. Read Psalm 104. Who can read these words without feeling God’s delight in all the wonderful works that He has made and is sustaining? Notice that throughout the

 

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Psalm, God is doing beneficial things for His creation in the present— in other words, after the Fall. Finally the Psalmist concludes: May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. (Psalm 104:31-33).

John Piper (2000) explained that in verse 31, the cry of the Psalmist is not wishful thinking or even strong hope, but a certainty that God does rejoice in His works. Once we have learned that the primary purpose of the creation is to glorify God, we should not be surprised in the least when we discover that it performs that purpose, even after having been cursed for man’s sin! Another passage that helps us see God’s delight in the Creation is Job 38-41. It chronicles an extended monologue by God as He answered Job’s complaint and the varying degrees of folly and wisdom of Job’s friends. Interestingly, God does not provide a direct answer to Job. Instead, He seems to boast, using His works in creation as the basis for His changing Job’s perspective. One cannot read these chapters without getting a very clear vision of God’s possessive pride in what He has made. Neither can one miss that most of what God enjoys about creation is totally beyond man’s knowledge and understanding: Creation praises God simply by being what it was created to be in all its incredible variety. And since most of the creation is beyond the awareness of mankind (in the reaches of space, and in the heights of mountains, and at the bottom of the sea) it wasn’t created to serve purposes that have merely to do with us. It was created for the enjoyment of God (Piper, 2000, p. 89).

Though we see that God’s glory, honor, and delight comprise the major themes of creation, it should not surprise us that there would be other, subordinate purposes. God is complicated. One of the first principles of Christian theology, and one that we tend to easily forget, is that the finite (us) cannot completely comprehend the infinite (God). This oft-forgotten doctrine can help us understand why there is a rich

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diversity of purposes woven into God’s revealed motives in creation. All of these secondary purposes are connected by the one great purpose of God’s glorifying Himself. As complex persons, we should understand that God is infinitely more complex, and should not be surprised at the discovery of nuance in His work. Those who value efficiency also realize that God’s ability to achieve many objectives with one act is a testimony to His infinite competence. The doctrine of our inability to fully comprehend God also helps encourage a strong dependence on revelation. As we investigate the crucial questions about creation, we will unfortunately find that this is the great divide between Christians today on the issues of origins and ancient history. Some accept the primacy of God’s word while others subordinate it to man’s wisdom and knowledge. Paul reminds us that God’s word was one of the great advantages that Jews historically enjoyed over Gentiles. How does Paul characterize that advantage? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:2).

If we discard this advantage for man’s wisdom, what does that say about our understanding of God’s incomprehensibility or about even our faith? Finally, this doctrine helps us see that some answers have been withheld from us in this life. We know all that we need for now, but an eternity in God’s presence rises up before us, and surely God has depths to His character and purpose that we will not and cannot know until we have spent eons in His presence. For example, consider what Paul said about his spiritual experience. No wonder he longed to be absent from the body and at home with God! I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven— whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter (II Corinthians 12:2-4).

While we recognize that there are minor themes to God’s purpose in creating, we thank God that He has provided a central unified theme to organize our thoughts. We can think of these minor themes as

 

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facets of the creation that reflect God’s glory along different paths. Paul touches on several of these themes in Acts 17:24-29. Let’s step through them together. First, verse 24 affirms God’s evident sovereignty over the Creation, calling Him “Lord of heaven and earth.” That major theme is stated before turning to man. God can only be “Lord of heaven and earth” if He owns it completely. He does so by virtue of having made it. If God is Lord, what are we and what do we owe Him? What does the servant owe to the Lord? At the very least, a servant should reflect the honor and dignity of the Master. Paul emphasizes that this is a one-way street in verse 25, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything….” Paul immediately removes the one prop that sinful man has always used to put leverage on God: “He needs us.” This fallacy infects both pagan and Christian alike and leads only to pride, which in turn leads to God’s opposition. Paul strikes the first minor theme in the remainder of verse 25, “since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Man is presented in Genesis 1 as the culmination of creation, but we must remember that man’s intrinsic worth is due to his superior ability to glorify God, having been created in His image. Verse 25 is the biblical warrant for the oft-observed notion that each inhalation of our lungs is a gift from God—a gift given or withheld at His pleasure, not ours. Christians who are scientists make much of this theme, rightly noting that the precise parameters of the Earth and solar system⎯from the distance between the Earth and Sun to the composition of our atmosphere⎯are designed exactly for human life. They consider these evidences of design in a broad category called the “Anthropic Principle.” This is a fancy term stating that the world was made for man’s habitation, one of the minor themes of creation. Paul continues in verses 27-30 to explain that man has a purpose beyond just existing in a beautiful world: to seek and find his Creator and that fellowship for which all were created⎯another minor theme of creation. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and

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find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent…

God did not just make man, but He made them with a definite plan for their history. Having first made a family (Adam and Eve) and then redeemed another family from judgment (Noah, his wife, his sons, and his son’s wives), He worked through and in spite of the evil intentions of man to create a whole collection of nations and peoples that have allowed the full variety of mankind to flower across the Earth. Even in this God gains glory as Paul teaches that He will harvest all the nations and peoples to make one people for His eternal possession (Acts 11:18; Revelation 21:24,26; 22:2). Conclusion  Understanding why God created at all is essential to addressing subordinate questions about when or how God created, because the answer to “why?” reveals the nature and character of the Creator. Knowing that God created for His own glory, honor, dignity, and pleasure gives us that all-important perspective that weighs our own dependent existence against His infinite and blessed being. Knowing that God never needed to create us or anything else to be satisfied and happy should humble us and fill us with gratitude that He did make us. Finally, knowledge of the great overarching purpose of God in creation allows us to orient our lives to consciously support and defend that honor and glory above our own often-misguided pleasures. Other purposes in God’s works of creation or providence find greater coherence when viewed in the light of God’s one great end. Was the Earth made a perfect habitat for men? Of course, but we truncate our vision when we do not see God’s marvelous ability and kindness standing behind our environment. Even sin cannot mar God’s purpose⎯the Creation still glorifies Him every day, and He uses

 

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the occasion of sin, judgment, and death to reveal depths of His justice and mercy that would have remained invisible apart from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Now that we understand the big picture, we can move on to address issues and debates surrounding how and when God created, knowing that only the answers to those questions that magnify God’s glory, honor, and pleasure above all else are worthy of our trust and affirmation.

 

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Addendum  Jonathan Edwards’ Answer to “Why?”  We delight in modern technology and the way it enriches our lives through medicine, education, communication, and entertainment. Yet our enthusiasm for our own day can bias us against the past, and cause us to forget the rich 2,000 year history of the church and the great wisdom that has accumulated over those ages. Since “why?” is such an important question, I would like to mine that treasure trove of wisdom and not depend on our own relatively puny understanding. One of the past giants of biblical wisdom was a man many consider America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards (17031758). He answered this very question in his 17549 treatise, A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. Although the dissertation is compact, the quotes below will amply demonstrate that we could profitably spend hours on each paragraph. Although Edwards was a philosopher of the first order and approached the first of his two chapters from the standpoint of reason, he was very clear about his priorities: Indeed this affair seems properly to be an affair of divine revelation. In order to be determined what was designed, in the creating of the astonishing fabric of the universe we behold, it becomes us to attend to, and rely on what HE has told us, who was the architect (Chapter 1, Section I).

This reminder is one we should heed. Modern advocates of reason and science do not share Edwards’ conviction. However, as disciples of an omniscient God, we must side with Edwards at this point and place our trust in God’s word when it speaks and let reason follow. A 9

 It was published after his death in 1765.  

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portion of the numerous passages Edwards cited in his arguments are appended at the end of this book. Before we delve into Edwards’ treatise, let’s skip ahead to his final answer. Why did God create? It’s very simple—He created for himself: “…he who is their first cause is their last end” (Chapter 1, Section III). Now there are many other answers floating around today related to His creating a home for man, or even creating to enjoy the fellowship of the creatures, etc. However, as we saw earlier, our forefathers thought in terms of God being the chief end of man, not man being the chief end of God. As Edwards said: The notion of God creating the world, in order to receive a thing properly from the creature, is not only contrary to the nature of God, but inconsistent with the notion of creation; which implies a being receiving its existence, and all that belongs to it, out of nothing…. Now if the creature receives its ALL from God, entirely and perfectly, how is it possible that it should have any thing to add to God, to make him an any respect more than he was before, and so the Creator become dependent on the creature? (Chapter 1, Section I).

Now this answer may seem strange to us because it implies things about God that we either do not think about very much, or do not want to believe. But a little consideration tells us that the ultimate answer to why God created must be found in His character and nature. After all, He was the only one around when He did it! Like Paul, Edwards encouraged us to think more about God and less about ourselves. To understand Edwards’ arguments, we must keep uppermost in our minds a crucial truth about the nature of God: that there is no thing or being that God loves, respects, honors, esteems, and delights in more than Himself. God loves Himself. God thinks more highly of Himself than anything else. God takes pleasure in Himself above all else. God values Himself above all things. God is totally self-sufficient and complete in the eternal, infinite, unchanging triune being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or, as Edwards put it: Hence it will follow, that the moral rectitude of the disposition, inclination, or affection of God chiefly consists in a regard to himself,

 

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infinitely above his regard to all other beings; or, in other words, his holiness consists in this (Chapter 1, Section I).

Edwards anticipated the objections to this point and answered them in great detail. First, he noted that people might think that God is selfish, unworthy, or ignoble in seeking His glory first. As Edwards said, it would be selfish, unworthy, and ignoble if any human being took that attitude about themselves. But he explained that the issue is not one of the self and others (as if among equals), but one of valuing and esteeming that which is the most worthy of those affections. And who or what is worthier than God? In other words, in yet another way, God is totally unlike us; He would be unworthy and ignoble if He valued lesser things above Himself, while we are unworthy, selfish, and ignoble when we do not value God above all else. What does this mean for creation? Simply that God created with His ends in view, not ours. He also would then have created freely; there was no constraint, no necessity, no deficiency in God that required the universe or us to complete. But the notion that God did not need to create in one sense makes the answer to why He created much more difficult. We have an adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” If God was totally and completely selfsufficient, then why did He create anything? Fortunately good theology cuts deeper than our maxims. Edwards delved deeply into the nature of God to answer this question, and in doing so he uncovered deep truth about the end or purpose of creation. First, we understand that God has a sufficiency of wonderful attributes: power, holiness, goodness, justice, and wisdom. Next, we see that God loves Himself, and in so doing, He must love His attributes, too—again, because they are perfect and worthy of all love and delight. Edwards emphasized that if the attributes are worthy in and of themselves, then the exercise of those attributes would also be worthy. It seems a thing in itself proper and desirable, that the glorious attributes of God, which consists in a sufficiency to certain acts and effects, should be exerted in the production of such effects as might manifest his infinite power, wisdom, righteousness, goodness, & etc. (Chapter 1, Section II).

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Edwards envisioned God as having a disposition to manifest His character in words and works. God is pictured as the sun emanating its light and as an unlimited fountain that naturally overflows, creating streams where none existed before. And those “streams” are manifested in the Creation. Read and reread this paragraph and you will understand the heart of Edwards’ thought. Thus it appears reasonable to suppose, that it was God’s last end, that there might be a glorious and abundant emanation of his infinite fullness of good ad extra, or without himself; and that the disposition to communicate himself, or diffuse his own fullness was what moved him to create the world… Therefore, to speak strictly according to truth, we may suppose, that a disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his own infinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world; and so, that the emanation itself was aimed at by him as a last end of creation (Chapter 1, Section II).

Therefore, creation is act by which God demonstrates His love of His own attributes! His original desire was to exercise those attributes and make them known to other moral beings so that they could also share God’s appreciation of both the attributes and their exercise. It is a thing, infinitely good in itself, that God’s glory should be known by a glorious society of created beings. And that there should be in them an increasing knowledge of God to all eternity is worthy to be regarded by him, to whom it belongs to order what is fittest and best (Chapter I, Section II).

It is worth noting here, as an aside, that this insight also answers your children’s (and maybe your own) questions about whether or not heaven will be boring. How can it possibly be boring when we will have an eternally-unfolding revelation of God in His words and works: things of which we only experience now as the smallest tastes in our fleeting mortal lives? We are finite, God is infinite; He will surprise and delight us forever. Given this view of God, unfortunately so different from our jaded modern perspective, it is no wonder that Edwards could then reach his final answer:

 

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So if God both esteem and delight in his own perfections and virtues, he cannot but value and delight in the expressions and genuine effects of them. So that in delighting in the expressions of his perfections, he manifests a delight in himself; and in making these expressions of his own perfections his end, he makes himself his end (Chapter 1, Section III).

If this is the answer to our great question, “why did God create?”, then we need only to validate Edwards’ answer. With a firm reliance on Scripture guiding his thinking, Edwards demonstrated both from biblical passages and from derivative logic that his answer is not found just once, but many times from multiple perspectives. Why is this important? In a trial, a prosecutor strengthens his case with multiple independent witnesses. Edwards is doing something similar by coming at the problem from many different angles. Let’s explore just a few. First, we must understand that he distinguishes between the kinds of ‘ends.’ There are ends for the Creation and ends for providence. There are inferior, dependent ends, and superior, ultimate ends. Next, since anything’s use tells us about its purpose, Edwards argued that the general end of providence (God’s use of His creation) points us to the purpose of creation. For example, you purchase a car and use it to drive to your destinations. Its use (transporting you from one place to another) is the primary reason you bought it. Next, since the Bible speaks of the same purpose for many of the specific works of providence, then we can infer that this purpose is the same as the general purpose of providence and thus of creation. Finally, the purpose of man, of saints in a more limited sense, and of Jesus in the ultimate sense (as the zenith of the moral creation) all reflect the purpose of creation. In all of these cases, the Bible validates Edwards’ reasoning by providing exactly the same answer—God created for His own glory. What does the Bible say? In a general sense, it refers to God as both the beginning and the end, and Edwards quite properly sees the beginning as the first cause and the end as the final cause (Isaiah 44:6; Revelation 1:8). Edwards’ bolsters his interpretation by reference to Romans 11:36; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 2:10; and Proverbs 16:4. He notes too, that God makes an exclusive claim to His glory in Isaiah 48:11,

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reinforcing the idea that God’s end in creation was His own glory, and not that of any other thing. Following up on all the different scriptures that do not directly speak to God’s end in creation, but imply it from aspects of providence, Edwards looked at the multiplicity of places that reinforce his answer. Among his many examples are: • Man’s creation and his final end are for God’s glory (Isaiah 48:67; 60:19-21). • God chose His saints to glorify Himself (Ephesians 1:5; II Thessalonians 1:10-12). • Goodness in the Creation brings God glory (John 15:8; Philippians 1:10-11; I Peter 4:11). • Repentance, faith, and worship, and all specific acts of providence exist to bring God glory (Revelation 11:13; 16:9). • Christians’ general virtue is for God’s glory (Matthew 5:16; I Peter 2:12). • Many specific virtues of Christians serve God’s glory (Joshua 6:19; Luke 7:18; Romans 4:20; II Corinthians 8:19). • Christians are commanded to glorify God (I Corinthians 6:20; 10:31). • The Lord’s Prayer makes God’s glory the end of both the first and last petitions. • God’s glory was the highest purpose of the apostles (Romans 16:27; Galatians 1:4-5; Hebrews 13:21; Jude 25; Revelation 1:5-6). • Christ sought God’s glory as His highest end (John 7:18; 12:27-28; 17:1). • God’s glory is the purpose of redemption—the greatest work of providence (Luke 2:14; John 17; Philippians 2:6-11). • The Old Testament echoes this theme (Psalm 79:9; Isaiah 44:23; 49:3). Although these samples certainly do not exhaust Edwards’ analysis, they are sufficient to show God’s making and sustaining all things for the end of His own glory is a dominant theme throughout the Bible.

 

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No other answer to the question of why God ultimately created can find the scriptural support and logical coherence that Edwards provided. In fact, every other biblical answer to that question is best explained as a subordinate and dependent purpose under the great overarching design of God’s glorifying Himself. This is important, because many Christians today do not distinguish between God’s purposes in this fashion and treat all answers as equal in weight, something Edwards warns against: That which God had primarily in view in creating, and the original ordination of the world, must be constantly kept in view, and have a governing influence in all God’s works, or with respect to every thing he does towards his creatures (Introduction).

Jonathan Edwards speaks from the 18th century with a clarity and force that must inevitably lead us to conclude that God created for Himself. If His honor, glory, and delight are the foundation stones of His purpose in creation, then let us use the answer to “why?” as a template for subordinate questions of how and when God created. In other words, only those answers that promote God’s honor, glory, and delight are worthy of our confession, and those answers that best serve that end must be considered as the best answers. I am convinced that this theological approach can cut through the scientific arguments that rage in the church today, and provide clarity for those who are frustrated by the present confusion.

 

Chapter 3 

The Derivative Importance of “How?”   

Why is there any question about how God created the world? In one sense the Bible gives several clear answers to that question. God created according to a wise plan (Psalm 104:24; Proverbs 3:19), the Son and the Spirit worked with the Father (Genesis 1:2; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16), and God used the power of the spoken word to bring into being what did not exist before (Hebrews 11:3). But as we have already noted, men are insatiably curious and want greater detail than the short biblical narrative provides. That is legitimate (Proverbs 25:2), but there are other, less worthy reasons the question has created so much contention in today’s church. Keeping Up With Culture  Unfortunately, one of these is a distortion of a good motive. Across the history of the church, Christians have attained roles of leadership in the culture—setting the pace in music, art, philosophy, medicine, law, scholarship, and science. Many gifted saints advanced the Christian worldview and it was respected in the culture at large over many centuries. There was a flowering of this leadership during and after the Reformation, but that flower began to wither in the 18th century and the rot has become glaringly obvious in our own day. What is the result of this revolution? Consider the world around us today. Who drives the culture? Debauched entertainers, on-trial athletes, corrupt politicians, greedy lawyers, spinning journalists, and celebrity scientists. They have far surpassed theologians, pastors, and Christian scholars as the intellectual movers of the culture. Consequently, for the last two centuries the church has been trying to

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keep up with culture instead of driving it. And trying to keep up has led many down the wrong path. Keeping up with culture means keeping up with science, and ever since Lyell and Darwin, Christians have felt an apparently overwhelming compulsion to be relevant in some fashion. Some of the most enthusiastic support for the geologic ages and evolution has regrettably come from the ranks of the clergy and professional theologians, and even more regrettably that support proceeds from a fear that God’s word would somehow be proven “wrong” by modern science—as if man’s understanding could ever nullify God’s word. The history of this relationship is marked by a cycle that begins with the introduction of secular theories. Christian scholars quickly move to reinterpret the Bible to make it “fit” the new knowledge. But invariably, the secular theories are revised, and the Bible is once again twisted to fit. Over time, it seems that the Bible has nothing original to say to the culture. Theologians perpetually chase secular science in an effort to be a part of the culture. Christians have wasted years of their lives and reams of paper to make sure that the first 11 chapters of Genesis correspond with the latest interpretations of the experts. Theistic evolution, progressive creation, the gap theory, the day-age theory, the local flood theory, the tranquil flood theory, and the more recent “framework hypothesis” have all attempted to synthesize (or syncretize) the Bible and modern science (Table 1). Those Christians who hold to the traditional view of Genesis with 24-hour creation days, a young Earth, and a global Flood are ridiculed and attacked as much from inside the church as outside. Where does all this lead? Once compromise starts, then individuals, denominations, seminaries, and Christian colleges have shown a sad trend over time to move away from the integrity and trustworthiness of the Bible and closer to tenets of

 

Crucial Questions about Creation  Modern Compromises

Issue

Traditional Christianity

Biblical Authority

Authoritative, lacking detail

Theism

God of Bible is Supreme Creator

No relevance; Bible must be science is interpreted by truth science God of Bible Atheism is Supreme Creator

Origin of Universe

Supernatural, ex nihilo creation

Eternal existence of matter/energy

Creation via Big Bang

Genesis 1

Historical account of creation

No relevance

Non-historical account

Evolution

Has not occurred

Fundamental principle of matter

Used by God to varying extent

Earth’s Age

~6,000 years

4.5 billion years

4.5 billion years

Genesis Flood

Global, real, apocalyptic judgment

Religious myth

Real, yet local event

Rock Record

Identical to uniformitarian column

Origin of Man

Majority from creation and Flood Created male and female in God’s image

Evolved from lower forms

Identical to uniformitarian column Body evolved, soul divinely implanted

Origin of Death

Result of Adam’s sin

Natural process

Natural process

Modern Naturalism

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Table  1.  Christianity  and  Naturalism  are  at  odds  over  most  themes  related  to  Genesis;  unfortunately,  the  modern  church has compromised many of these issues, trying to find  a middle ground. 

secular society. Some demonstrate that they were never in the faith to begin with. For example, Davis Young—geologist and son of renowned theologian E.J. Young—was an early proponent of the dayage theory. Over time he came to the conclusion that the Bible could

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not accommodate the forced exegesis necessary to square that interpretation with science, and he repudiated the day-age theory. However, rather than submitting to the clarity of Genesis, he moved instead in the opposite direction to an acceptance of evolution (Sarfati, 2004). In our day, the enemies of the church define the entire question of how God created. At issue is whether or not God “used” the Big Bang, evolution, or other naturalistic processes as a means of creation. Seeking the approval of both God and atheists, many make the attempt to explain that God used cosmological evolution over billions of years (see any book by Dr. Hugh Ross) or biological evolution. Sometimes, Neo-Darwinian evolution is denied and replaced by repetitive episodes of creation over billions of years—the progressive creation position. Either way, the result is a practical deism; God created the material universe and then set it on “auto” to evolve into its present form, perhaps stepping in every few million years to introduce biological innovation. Of course, there are variations on the theme. God may or may not have directly created life. God may or may not have directly intervened to keep evolution going, and God probably intervened to place an immortal soul into an evolved hominid to redirect human evolution. The first chapters of Genesis are either reconciled (poorly) or brushed off as appropriate to the “primitive” Jews of Moses’ time who could not possibly understand modern scientific truth, but not fit for our modern consumption, unless perhaps, with a condescending chuckle. Key to the Puzzle  The end result is that Christians today are faced with a myriad of views that are intricate and confusing to most believers, who don’t have the background, inclination, or time to study them in depth. However, I believe the entire debate can be simplified from the standpoint of theology by making a single dividing line between two approaches that encompasses the wide variety of ideas. In asserting this, I presume the superiority of theological truth over scientific theory.

 

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This method offers greater simplicity, and I believe that it begins to answer the question of how God created with that all-important deference to the template that we developed in the previous chapter. The dividing line is the question of God’s honor and the derivative authority accorded to His word. On one side is the position that begins with the authority of Scripture and claims its superiority over human knowledge and wisdom, while affirming the value of science and other human disciplines in their proper subordinate places. The creationists represent this position. They include members of organizations such as Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, Creation Ministries International, and the Creation Research Society.10 Despite theological diversity among creationists, there is across-the-board agreement on these basic issues: • The Bible is authoritative. • Genesis is primarily historical narrative from beginning to end. • Creation occurred in six 24-hour days. • Man was created in God’s image and then fell into sin, bringing God’s curse and judgment of death on creation. • Noah’s Flood was global in extent and effect. • All the people on Earth today are descendents of Noah. • The cosmos is thousands, rather than billions of years old. Based on an increased authority for the interpretations of modern science and a decreased authority of Scripture, all of the major compromise theories and positions clump together in: (1) their defense of the geologic ages, (2) defense of the big bang theory, and (3) the development of the Earth and life over that time. There are certainly variations on the theme, but they stand together in elevating science and its interpretations above the level of the Bible. Often the proponents of these ideas will even call nature the “67th book” of God’s revelation.

10

  See the end of the book for contact information. 

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While it is true there is a “general revelation” (c.f., Psalm 19; Romans 1) and its derivative natural theology, it is a gross distortion to elevate science to the level of Scripture. First, the Bible itself declares its own superiority over general revelation. Read the rest of Psalm 19 and compare the quality of revelation coming from the heavens against that coming from God’s word. Read Romans 2-3 and see Paul’s respect for the superiority of “the oracles of God” to man’s natural insights. Finally, Hebrews 1 unequivocally presents Christ and His word as the pinnacle of God’s revelation to man. We can affirm the existence of natural theology, but must also affirm its subordinate role to the Bible. It is important to remember that people are not neutral with respect to God and His truth (Matthew 6:24). Therefore, we cannot pretend that man’s commitment either to God or against Him does not influence their thought in all areas of life. Recognition of this fact has spurred a renewed look at the concept of worldviews in recent years.11 When we see that most men consciously or unconsciously see reality through the lens of their worldview, it becomes clear that science (or any other branch of human knowledge) cannot be neutral with respect to God. Jesus taught his disciples that men face two stark choices: we either love God or we hate Him. While good science includes methods that promote objectivity in experimental analysis and a respect for such objectivity, this limited, controlled, restricted objectivity should not be confused with spiritual neutrality, especially in questions of theology or history⎯both well outside the domain of science. History is the Issue, not Science  Before moving along, we need to clarify this claim, because most modern scholars readily accept “historical science,” or the application of the scientific method to the study of the past. It is crucial for Christians to understand this attempted fakery. Have you ever seen a great receiver in a football game start running in one direction and then suddenly turn, leaving his defender turned totally confused and unable to keep up? That is what has happened to the church. We have 11

 See Schaeffer (1982), Sire (1976), and Noebel (1991; 2001). 

 

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concentrated so hard on the issue of science vs. religion that we have failed to see that the real issue is not science at all. It is history! Genesis is a book of historical narrative. Therefore, challenges to Genesis are historical challenges, no matter how they might be disguised as science. Logic demands it. Therefore, the church must begin to grasp the distinctions between science and history and the underlying theology that is the foundation for evolution. How about the difference between science and history? Are not men who study dinosaurs and ancient rocks, scientists? For the most part, yes, but then the previous paragraph seems incorrect. My own confusion about this question lasted for many years, until I found a book entitled, The Conditions of Philosophy, by the famous philosopher, Mortimer J. Adler. In it, he clearly explained the distinctions between different types of knowledge: science, history, different areas of philosophy, and mathematics. The light came on in my head when he introduced the concept of “mixed questions,” those that require more than one discipline to resolve. I realized that natural history is a mixed question, because it is an area of knowledge where progress is made by joining more than one specialty. In its forensic sense, science is able to contribute significantly to natural history, but that does not change the fact that the study of unique past events is still history. Since historical study depends on philosophical assumptions about reality, matter, space, and time that in turn depend on theological conclusions about the same; the study of natural history involves at least four areas of knowledge! Evolutionists would try to convince us that there are no mixed questions—it is all simply science. A good analogy of the proper relationship between science and natural history is science’s forensic contributions to criminal investigation. Television shows glamorize the role of scientific methods in this area. However, criminology includes much more than forensic science. While a useful tool, it is only a tool. Science cannot define the parameters of criminal investigation, because at its foundation criminal behavior is a human phenomenon and thus beyond the ability of science to fully understand. If that were not true,

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then scientists should be able to predict criminal behavior the way that chemists predict particular reactions. Likewise, natural history applies scientific tools to interpret past events. Even the simple assumptions that there was a “past” and that it is open to our knowledge require conclusions validated only by philosophy and theology. As stated above, the study of unique past events falls under the umbrella of history. Science is useful as a forensic tool, but its conclusions about events of the past leave the realm of science and cross over into history. So for 200 years the church has not even correctly framed the question of how God created the Earth! Let’s look at it in terms of what we learned in the previous chapter. Seeing God’s Glory in How He Created  If the great, overarching purpose of creation and subsequent history is to bring honor, glory, and pleasure to God, then it only makes sense that how God created and then acted in history must also fulfill that great purpose. Unlike other ways of examining the issue of origins, this method of analysis is one that Christians of any educational background can comprehend, and it takes the issue out of the hands of the scientific elite⎯Christian or not. We are justified in this approach by the common sense of Jesus: “…the tree is known by its fruit.” (Matthew 12:33). In our context, incorrect interpretations of Scripture will not bear fruit that promotes the honor and glory of God, but those that are true will certainly keep God’s glory sharply in focus. A further application of this verse would be to examine the cultural consequences of evolution and compare them to biblical ethical norms. The mass media show us these consequences each day: abortion, devaluation of human life, relativism, immorality, homosexuality, and a host of other sins that flow from men having no absolute standard and no accountability to God. I would suggest a number of ways in which God is not glorified by compromise interpretations of Genesis. These include those interpretations that do not honor the exegetical and hermeneutic principles readily applied to the rest of Scripture. If these were applied

 

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to Genesis 1-11, they would inevitably result in what is commonly derided as the creationist position today. Let’s look at how these novel interpretations dishonor God. •

The authority of God’s supreme revelation is called into question. The Bible clearly teaches creation in six 24-hour days with the creatures made “after their kind” and in an order of creation that clearly contradicts evolutionary succession. It also clearly teaches that the first humans were the real Adam and Eve, whom Jesus talks about as existing “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:4). If these things are not historical realities, then the Bible is not trustworthy as we understand it. For example, try applying day-age arguments to the time Jesus was in the tomb! That Genesis was written to accommodate “primitive” Jews is an insult to them, an insult to Moses, and it makes God the author of disingenuous revelation. If true, then Moses’ account fooled saints for centuries. If almost two millennia of saints have misunderstood the Bible, then evidently the Holy Spirit is unable to provide understanding. It is ironic that in this version of reality, the “truth” was only recently revealed to deists, agnostics, and atheists (Sarfati, 2004). Furthermore, references to the people and events of Genesis that pepper the rest of the Bible inevitably lead to the conclusion that the entire Bible was written for “primitive” man. This means that Christians and Jews are on a lower plane than enlightened scientists, and that the truth of Christianity is also on a lower plane. How do these kinds of conclusions honor God? They do not: God clearly teaches that He is superior to any human wisdom, primitive or modern (Isaiah 55:8; I Corinthians 1:25).

•

The character and attributes of God are impugned by theistic evolution. God’s wisdom is certainly called into question if He used such an inefficient, wasteful process as evolution to ready the Earth for man. His power is called into question if He is subject to the external principle of evolution, rather than simply creating

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freely. His goodness is also called into question. Throughout Genesis 1, God says that what He had made was “good.” Think for a moment about the history that is portrayed on the Discovery Channel or in National Geographic. Think of billions of years of a struggle for existence, in which species war with each other for genetic advantage; hundreds of millions of years of death, decay, predation, cruelty, senseless natural disaster, and the resulting waste of massive extinctions of plant, animal, and human life. What is the end of these ages of blood? A home for man—a blood-soaked ground where he could join in the destruction of other species to ensure the preservation of his own? No matter how an evolutionary or uniformitarian past is sugarcoated, it is not a past that reflects glory and honor on the Creator. It makes Him the author of suffering and death apart from His just judgment of Adam’s sin. Thousands of evolutionary dead ends reveal Him to be an eternal tinkerer, without the foresight and wisdom to get it right the first time. While some may say that the infinite complexity of an evolutionary past may show the infinite complexity of God, I say that the price is too high. The “god” of evolution is not the God of the Bible! In contrast, I believe that the straightforward reading of Genesis, as much as it flies in the face of interpretations of modern science, gives glory to God. •

The authority and superiority of God’s word is upheld because it is shown to be superior to the best knowledge and wisdom that man can muster. Many are convinced that modern science represents the historical zenith of man’s knowledge. Granting this belief, God’s word has taken on the best that sinful man can offer and has shown it to be an inferior product to His eternal truth revealed in the Bible. That should not be surprising to us since God also says: Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly

 

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of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (I Corinthians 1:20-25).

•

God’s attributes and character are honored and worthy of praise. His wisdom, power, and goodness are displayed, not compromised, by the Genesis account. For example, sin and death are brought on the creation by the free act of Adam, not by God’s evolutionary design. It is interesting that even church fathers who erred in their interpretation of Genesis did so in a completely opposite manner than their modern spiritual descendents. For example, Augustine held that God’s power was such that He created everything instantaneously, and then revealed his activity to man as taking place over one week. I don’t know why Augustine chose this interpretation: he could have affirmed both the Genesis account and God’s power to create instantaneously. For although the entire process was spread over a week (for our benefit—Exodus 20:11), we know that the original creation of the time-space-matter continuum was instantaneous (Genesis 1:1). If it’s still important in the kingdom, I’ll ask him! Furthermore, God’s individual acts of creation throughout the chapter were instantaneous. For example, God spoke a command for light. Instantly, there was light, according to God’s word. As we know, God is not limited by anything other than Himself. When we accept the Genesis account, we are affirming that characteristic of God, not allowing His power and ability to be limited by principles of the cosmos or of nature. How can we imply that He was constrained to create life by making single-celled organisms and letting them evolve? Instead, there were only self-imposed limits—those revealed in the Bible and perhaps others that we will only learn in the far future. When we affirm God’s ability to create according to His will as He revealed, we honor Him, recognizing His infinite power and infinite freedom to do just as He pleases.

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In spite of the intellectual allure of respectability among the elite of our culture, compromise with evolution has been a disaster for the church because it has sacrificed the glory and honor of our Creator on the altar of His enemies. God related clearly and repetitively in Genesis 1 that He created plants and animals “after their kind.” He told us in the same place that there was a progression in His work over six days in which He made the physical universe, night and day, dry land and seas, heavenly bodies, birds and fish, land animals, and finally man in His image. It was a good creation, reflecting the fullness of God’s own attributes—even His justice following Adam’s sin. There is no compelling reason to believe otherwise. Evolution is part and parcel of the worldview of Naturalism, which has raised itself up against the truth of God in almost every respect. Sadly, its proponents are fools (Psalm 14:1); they elevate their own knowledge over that of God, and willingly ignore that God created the world and exercises control over it (Romans 1). What have they in common with the redeemed—other than a desperate need for the Savior—one whom we affirm and they deny, to their everlasting shame?

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The Derivative Importance of “When?”   

Among Christians, the question, “when did God create?” stirs up even more controversy than whether or not God used evolution to do it. Many Christians reject any possibility of Neo-Darwinian evolution, yet they are adamant about accepting a vast age for the cosmos, the big bang theory, and the geologic ages. As we saw in the last chapter, many Christians even accept some form of evolution. However, even among those who do not, many reject a recent creation, including the “progressive creationists,” and the relatively new “Intelligent Design” school. At this point, we should stop and make two important points. First, a person can certainly be a Christian and still be mistaken about some point of theology. No one will live long in heaven without becoming astonished and abashed at something they believed and even strenuously defended in this life. Also, Christians who hold error in one area often do great things for God in another (another manifestation of God’s glory). For example, the work of the advocates of Intelligent Design against evolution and its worldview of Naturalism has been exemplary.12 They simply either have not perceived or accepted that geological uniformitarianism is part and parcel of Naturalism, or they have not yet addressed it.13 However, the fact that one can be a Christian and be mistaken about the age of the Earth does not mean that we can dismiss that error as inconsequential. As we stated before, seeing that God created 12

 See Johnson (1993; 1995; 1997), Behe (1996), and Dembski (2004).   See Reed et al. (2004).  

13

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for His own glory, what we think and teach about that activity has some bearing upon God’s honor. Old or Young? Does it Matter?  It should be fairly clear that those Christians who assert a youthful creation do so by reference to the times specified in the Bible. Some propose a strict chronology; others believe the text allows a looser one. But “loose” has its limits when referring to human lifetimes—it is clear that the chronologies would be totally meaningless upon the insertion of the millions of years required by compromise positions. James Ussher’s chronology14 is the best known, with its date of 4,004 BC, but he was only one of many church leaders and intellectuals who derived biblical chronologies with a recent creation. Most of the church fathers, reformers, and commentators down to the 19th century interpreted the Bible as teaching a young Earth, even those few who interpreted the days of creation in a figurative sense.15 What about the other side? Why do they advocate billions of years? There are two lines of argument for the old-age position. As noted in the previous chapter, both fall on the wrong side of the question of biblical authority. The first argument is cosmological—astronomers and physicists estimate the age of the universe based primarily on the time required for light from distant objects to reach the Earth and from an a priori acceptance of the big bang theory. Although one could argue that problems abound in both of these areas, and that youngearth astronomers and physicists have advanced several reputable arguments pertaining to both of these issues, the real question always comes back to the authority of Scripture.16 The second argument is more down to earth. It relies on the discipline of geology and focuses on various lines of evidence to 14

  Answers  in  Genesis  has  recently  released  an  Ussher’s  Annals  of  the  World.  See the end of this book for contact information.  15  For example, Augustine taught that the creation was instantaneous and the  days  merely  a  device  to  help  men  understand  God’s  work.  However,  he  also  believed that the Earth was less than 6,000 years old (Sarfati, 2004, p. 122).  16  For a detailed discussion for laymen, see Sarfati (2004, Chapter 5).  

 

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support the supposed age of approximately 4.5 billion years for our planet. Two of the most important lines of evidence relate to the geologic column and to various types of isotopic dating.17 But underlying any belief in the geological ages is an important philosophical (not scientific) view that is commonly known as uniformitarianism, sometimes called actualism. This concept is most commonly known by its slogan, “the present is the key to the past.” That means that when geologists examine older rocks, they look for templates in modern geologic processes as a basis for interpretation. For example, they study geologic processes on modern beaches looking for clues to identify ancient deposits as beach sands. But notice in this scheme that uniformitarianism functions not as a scientific discovery, but as a philosophical axiom. Otherwise, how could we have any confidence that ancient deposits formed in the same way that modern ones do? There can be no scientific demonstration of that assumption—no geologist ever built sand castles on ancient beaches! In addition to the non-scientific axiom of uniformitarianism both cosmology and isotopic dating mislead in another way. They use their connection with scientific measurement to claim historical validity equivalent to the reliability of experimental science. Therefore, their object is not scientific understanding, but a reinterpretation of “ancient” (unobserved) historical events. On the face of it, this appears to be the classic bait and switch gimmick, attempting to gain an undue confidence in historical reinterpretation. Therefore, when the details of the lines of evidence are investigated, one finds that they are not quite as rigorously scientific as presented. Their presuppositions cannot be demonstrated scientifically, and are often ignored. For example, let’s examine uniformitarianism more closely. Uniformitarianism is an extrapolation of the commonly 17

  Some  creationists  adduce  time  significance  in  isotopic  dates,  finding  explanations  for  the  apparent  “old”  dates  in  accelerated  decay,  etc.  An  example of this school of thought is found in the RATE Project, sponsored by  the  Institute  for  Creation  Research  .  Another  excellent  text  questions  the  methods  on  broader  grounds  (Woodmorappe, 1999).  

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applied axiom of uniformity. Uniformity simply means that we expect established physical laws and constants to remain the same over time and across space. Without this assumption, science would be impossible. But thinking philosophically, how is that assumption justified? It cannot be done scientifically since people cannot observe everything everywhere to validate the necessary extrapolation from the little that is observed. Christians, who were instrumental in the development of modern science, recognized that uniformity must have strong theological roots. It made perfect sense to them. If God is unchanging, orderly, and wise, then His creation should exhibit those traits, too. That is how early Christian scientists justified their assumption. But you can readily see that a problem remains for atheists. They have no God. Therefore, there is nothing outside the physical universe to justify assumptions about its operation. But they have been very clever. To get around their insurmountable problem, they pilfered the Christian conclusion of uniformity that did require God’s existence, and hoped that no one looked too closely at the resulting inconsistency. After all, everyone accepted the assumption of uniformity without question, having done so for centuries. So proponents of the Naturalist worldview stole a Christian assumption to support their anti-Christian edifice, and unfortunately, the church allowed it to happen.18 In addition to twisting the Christian conclusion of uniformity into uniformitarianism, Naturalists have attempted (with great success) to reduce history to science. This transformation is essential to those opposed to Christianity, because Christianity is a religion built firmly upon historical events. Christian history, once commonly accepted, has been beaten down by either: (1) claiming a different interpretation of particular events, or more commonly, by (2) claiming that those events never happened at all. The usual method for the latter is to claim that “science” has demonstrated that the biblical account of creation, the Flood, Adam and Eve, etc. could not possibly be true. For example, a 18

 For a more in‐depth discussion of the theft of Christian presuppositions by  Naturalism, see Reed (2001).  

 

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recent theory popularized by the Discovery Channel posited that Noah’s Flood was a result of rapid sea level rise in the Black Sea, as water flowed north through the Straits of Bosporus.19 However, more recent work indicates that the water actually flowed in the opposite direction!20 This is no surprise to Christians, who need only look at the account in Genesis to see that a local sea level rise of the Black Sea could not possibly be what the Bible describes in Genesis 7 & 8.21 Likewise, modern archaeology has abandoned the solid foundation of biblical history and now relies on much shakier grounds. For example, the chronologies of the Bible are replaced by those of ancient Egypt or Babylon, and discrepancies are “discovered” that are then called “errors” in the Bible.22 Isotopic dating and the evolutionary assumption complete the distortion that man is millions of years old instead of thousands. Biblical interpretation and our understanding of ancient history are both thrown into confusion by these incorrect presuppositions.23 For example, Cooper (1995) notes that British history taught in schools commonly begins with the invasion of the Romans under Julius Caesar in 55 BC, while there are lists of British kings and chronicles of their times that extend back to 1,200 BC. Why is this history ignored? Because the lists of kings works its way back from son to father to Japheth and Noah! Even more astounding, these genealogies are confirmed by remarkably similar, but independent lists of other European people groups; including the Saxons, Danes, Norwegian, the Irish Celts, and even the Vikings in Iceland. Biblical history is ignored in our culture because it was supplanted by uniformitarian history. The results? No possibility of miracles, steady rates of geological processes that demand an ancient Earth, the 19

 Ryan and Pittman (1998).   Aksu et al. (2002).  21  Walker (2000; 2002) and Froede (2001; 2002).   22  Down (2001).  23   Chittick  (1998)  demonstrates  how  a  biblical  framework  of  advanced  technology  and  civilization  before  and  immediately  after  the  Flood  that  degraded  in  the  following  centuries,  better  interprets  ancient  evidence  than  the opposite, but widely accepted, evolutionary assumption.  20

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distortion of early human history, and (as the Apostle Peter reminded us) a failure to notice (despite abundant evidence) that the Earth was once destroyed by water. A brighter warning light flashes when we realize that there is a worldview connection: uniformitarianism is part and parcel of the worldview of Naturalism, acting as the foundation of its historical inquiry. Thus, Christians need to focus more on the integrity of biblical history and less on being able to keep up in a discourse weighted to an anti-Christian worldview. Correct theology is more important here than the ability to discourse about sandstone, granite, plate tectonics, etc. And, as we noted in the last chapter, the purposes of God in creation provide the theological template for thinking about “when did God create?” in terms of His glory, honor, and pleasure. Does the Young‐Earth View Glorify God?  A conviction that the universe was created by God in a recent past measured in thousands of years was the dominant view of the Church from post-apostolic times down into the 19th century. Many poke fun at Archbishop James Ussher for deriving an exact date of creation. However, they tend to forget that Ussher’s chronology was only one of many—and the silence is deafening when we learn that among Ussher’s competitors was Sir Isaac Newton! There is ongoing debate over the completeness of the chronologies of Genesis 5 & 11, but stretching the history by thousands of years is ridiculous. Therefore, most creationists broadly agree with Ussher’s date. Why is it important that the young-earth view was normative for much of church history? First, it adds the weight of most of the great theologians and exegetes of the body of Christ to the creationist position. One has to wonder why God would have fooled men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley and revealed the true extent of history to deists, agnostics, and atheists (Sarfati, 2004). Second, it helps us see the influence of information outside the Bible, confirming that recent changes have nothing to do with exegetical or hermeneutic advances. Dramatic changes in our understanding of early history have been forced by interpretations of

 

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modern scientists committed to a worldview of Naturalism, not by a better understanding of Scripture. Therefore, I can confidently say that the creationist position glorifies God by adhering to the best interpretation of the Bible. It is the best, not simply because the church affirmed it through most of its history, but because the church affirms it without the distortions caused by modern evolutionary and uniformitarian ideas. As such, God’s word is given its proper and superior authority over the wisdom of men. After all, God’s reputation is irretrievably linked to His word. If the Bible is not trustworthy, then neither is God. If God’s word can only be true if it is warped and twisted around the knowledge of man, then God does not possess the superiority of wisdom, knowledge, and expression that our theology teaches so strongly. God’s glory is further enhanced because the youthfulness of the world brings God’s activities more closely into focus. Earth history is not the sum of long, uniform processes—a view that pushes God farther and farther away and corresponds more closely with Deism than Christianity. Our history defines a beginning and an end that depend totally upon God. Points on that timeline make better sense in a short timeframe. Many theologians rightly argue that the Cross is the center of history, not necessarily in time, but definitely in emphasis. It is not an illogical conclusion to expect some degree of symmetry between the beginning, the end, and the exclamation point of the timeline of the universe.24 Finally, the young-earth position grants the proper weight and emphasis to the Genesis Flood. Let’s be clear. You cannot have both the Flood of the Bible and uniformitarian geology. Either billions of years of modern processes formed the rocks of the crust, or a short, intense catastrophe did. There is no middle ground. Otherwise, Lyell and the scriptural geologists25 would never have battled in the early 1800s. Nor would you be able to pick up any introductory geology textbook and find some gloating remark about the pre-modern religious fanatics that used to believe such a fanciful story. But the 24

 See Cullmann (1964).    See Mortenson (2004). 

25

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Bible teaches unambiguously that there was such a Flood. Therefore, in spite of the vast numbers of geologists that disagree, I affirm its truth. God is glorified in Romans 3 for providing justification of sins through the atoning work of the Lord Jesus. But Paul has another weighty concern that we dare not miss. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25b-26).

Notice Paul states that the work of Christ makes God the Father both just and the justifier of believers. Why does it make God just? Because otherwise, He would be allowing sin without a corresponding righteous judgment. If we deny the global Flood of Genesis, then we deny the only instance of God’s global justice being exercised and consequently reduce the certainty that God can and will judge the entire planet and its population for sin. While it is not the only instance of God’s exercising His prerogative of justice, it is the only historical example of God doing so for everyone, everywhere. Limiting judgment to local events and limited numbers of people is an encouragement to evil men that “it can’t happen to me.” God’s justice cuts to the heart of His character, and His loving mercy becomes small in the context of small justice. Does the Old‐Earth View Glorify God?  We must consider the possibility that neither view differs from the other with respect to God’s glory. I suspect that most Christians who advocate this position would argue vociferously that they are glorifying God more than their opponents, because when science “proves” the old-earth position correct, then Christianity, in a repeat of the Galileo episode, will receive another black eye in the sight of the world. However, the perspective of modern western secularism is not the correct pair of spectacles through which to view this issue. History is more complex than its popular retelling, and the Galileo episode was not a simple science vs. religion issue. Galileo is used to represent the “evil” of making science subordinate to the Bible.

 

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This, of course, is nonsense. Galileo was a scientist who believed in the trustworthiness of the Bible and sought to show that the Copernican (heliocentric) system was compatible with it. He was fighting against the contemporary principles of Bible interpretation which, blinded by Aristotelian philosophy, did not do justice to the biblical text. Galileo was not blamed for criticizing the Bible but for disobeying papal orders (Schirrmacher, 2000, p. 91).

Stepping out of our myopic western secular point of view, we should also realize that Genesis is crucial to world evangelism. Otherwise, how can the foundational doctrines of God, sin, judgment, and redemption have any intellectual context for anyone not raised in a Jewish or Christian environment—which at this point is most of the world’s people! In the paragraphs above, we see ways that the creationist view does glorify God. Let’s now look at the old-earth views, and I will suggest several ways in which they detract from God’s glory. Uniformitarianism and the Worldview of Naturalism  First, uniformitarianism is integral to the worldview of Naturalism. I believe that Christians today are more sensitive to philosophical trends in the culture than were their parents and grandparents who grew up thinking that the culture was still Christian. Many Christians today recognize that all people live and think within worldviews. A worldview is a comprehensive and integrated understanding of reality that unifies all realms of knowledge⎯theology, philosophy, history, science, politics, and ethics—into a coherent, cohesive concept of how the world works and how we relate to it. Our worldview can be the result of rigorous thought or an unthinking absorbing of our culture. Christianity is a well-developed worldview; Christians historically have believed that all of life is subservient to Christ. He is the Lord of every facet of life.26 There are also worldviews that stand in opposition to Christianity. One of these is Naturalism, also called “secularism,” or 26

 This distinctive is emphasized in the thinking of theologians like Dr. Francis  Schaeffer,  Herbert  Schlossberg,  Marvin  Olasky,  Charles  Colson,  James  Sire,  and David Noebel. 

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“secular humanism.” There are other ways to classify worldviews,27 including Marxism and “cosmic (New Age) humanism,” but all rely on uniformitarianism as a fundamental philosophy of history. Naturalism rejects the possibility of religious truth in favor of scientific truth, which is why many evolutionists argue that origins and Earth’s history are a matter of religion vs. science—they think once they define their opponent as religious that it will be self-evident that the argument is over. But Christianity must disagree with this facet of Naturalism: one cannot allow for different truths based on method. If many different “truths” exist (i.e., one for science, one for religion), then how can Christianity universally condemn evil and proclaim the gospel to the lost? After all, under a different version of truth, men may not be lost sinners at all! Since the Christian worldview is rooted in absolute truth, then all walks of life are subject to it, including origins and history. Christ is the Lord of all life and speaks to every intellectual pursuit. Paul emphasizes this in the following verse. Note his emphasis by repetition of the word, “every”: 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 (II Corinthians 10:5).

Naturalism can be divided into three areas: metaphysical materialism, epistemological positivism, and historiographic uniformitarianism (Figure 1).28 Metaphysics is the area that defines ultimate reality and being. In this area, Christianity asserts that ultimate reality is God and so claims metaphysical theism. Epistemology is the branch of knowledge that addresses what we know and how we know it. It also defines truth. Naturalism relies on science as the basis for truth, while Christianity relies on truth from revelation. In the area of history, Naturalism asserts uniformitarianism, while Christianity sees history as the domain of God’s providence, including redemption. 27

 Noebel (2001).   More information about this topic may be found in Reed (2000) and in Reed  (2001). Both are available at www.wordmin.org.    28

 

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The failure to see uniformitarianism as an integral part of Naturalism is probably the single most important failure of old-earth advocates. No Christian should support any aspect of a worldview that opposes his own. That is why it is so important that we see the logical connections between Naturalism and uniformitarianism. What are they? Most Christians see the twisting of science as the strongest weapon of Naturalism. However, in reality, Naturalism’s dependence on science leaves it with a weak, one-dimensional theory of knowledge, because science is a method that evaluates knowledge in the present by observation and controlled experimentation.

Figure  1.  Comparison  of  the  worldviews  of  Christianity  and  Naturalism  in  terms of their metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of history.  

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This raises the question of how historical knowledge is possible. You cannot perform an experiment to demonstrate how dinosaurs became extinct! Forensic evidence may aid in that kind of speculation, but there is a world of difference between informed speculation and controlled experimentation. Naturalism must conquer history; otherwise, the Bible owns it. Charles Lyell, building on the works of Hutton and Playfair, solved this problem with his axiom of uniformitarianism. If processes in the past were no different than those in the present, then it is easy to take the conclusions of present-day science and extrapolate them back in time. No wonder that Lyell insisted on a very strict version of uniformitarianism—anything less would have been a concession that his grasp on history was weaker than what is outlined in the Bible. Today, people have conveniently forgotten the context of those early 19th century debates. Thus, the empirical data that demand a much looser version of uniformitarianism are not seen as a problem⎯an incredible inconsistency! One way to see what Lyell did is to picture science devouring history. There was no longer any history, just “historical science.” To save face, historians carved off human history as their domain and left everything else to “historical science.” This is the context for the creation of the modern word, “prehistoric.” When seen in this light, uniformitarianism can no longer be accepted as a neutral assumption. If it is truly part and parcel of the worldview of Naturalism, and if Naturalism sets itself in opposition to Christianity, then it should be unthinkable for Christians to support the concept. Many Christians are fooled by claims that uniformitarianism is simply good science. But we must ask how a theory of history can be demonstrated scientifically? Our observations are limited in space and time. How can a few hundred years of observation in very limited places provide the experimental basis for universal conclusions over billions of years? Short answer: it cannot. The Christian context of the early 19th century blinded everyone. For centuries, uniformity (the scientific axiom) was assumed to be true, because it could be easily justified by the character

 

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of God. But the excitement over science obscured the foundational nature of theology, and Lyell was able to take a presupposition that rested firmly in Christian theology and hijack it for his own use. His astounding success (which continues into our own day) speaks as much to the failure of the church as it does to his own intellectual duplicity. Now let’s look at the second major reason why we should reject uniformitarian history. Creation, the Flood, and Modern Misdirection  Your money or your life! So begins the famous conundrum presented by the now-world-famous hypothetical mugger. It’s a very uncomfortable proposition; not only are hard choices required, but for the typical consumer accustomed to hundreds of choices of hundreds of products, this restrictive demand offers only two. And to make it worse, neither is particularly desirable! However, our hypothetical mugger has done us one favor. He has demonstrated something called two-value logic⎯a dilemma where only two possibilities exist. One of the problems in the oldearth/young-earth debate is that a very important two-valued choice is frequently overlooked. This one has nothing to do with Genesis 1— another reason why it seems to get lost in the debate. After all, many Christians are drawn to Genesis 1 & 2 when discussing the Earth’s age. After all, those are the chapters that describe the beginning and that generate the traditional arguments about “days vs. ages,” “literary frameworks,” and “gaps.” However, our attention needs to shift from these chapters to those that present the true two-valued dilemma, Genesis 6-9. That is because one can argue that God created the universe as taught in Genesis 1 and retain some shred of intellectual honesty in being agnostic about the age of the Earth. However, the old-earth view is intimately intertwined with the geologic ages, which are in turn represented by the geologic column. Then we are assured by the experts that there is absolutely no record of a universal flood in the geologic record! What is conveniently left out are the reasons that a record of the Flood is absent: (1) uniformitarian scientists fought like tigers to

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eliminate the Genesis Flood from geology in the 19th century and will not allow it back in, and (2) the issue is not the physical presence of various rocks, but how they are interpreted. In other words, Flood geologists see the rock record as predominantly the result of a yearlong global catastrophe; uniformitarians see the same rocks and interpret them as the results of present-day processes operating mostly at present-day rates over billions of years. There is a fundamental conflict of assumptions, independent of the physical evidence, that cannot be compromised between the two visions of the past. Both sides claim the rock record for their own. Only one side can have it. So although an old-earth advocate can appear to show all kinds of respect for Genesis 1, he cannot allow the same consideration for Genesis 6-9 and retain any degree of intellectual consistency. Remember the template of Chapter 2? Let’s think for a moment about God’s glory. When God said that He judged man, found him wanting, and destroyed the face of the Earth because of sin, did that really mean He destroyed a few villages in some river valley in the Middle East? If so, then God’s authority, reliability, and ability to execute judgment are all called into question. Our great hope amid injustice and evil in this life is a final judgment at the end of this age that God promises to be comprehensive and complete. How can we trust that promise if God’s other “comprehensive and complete” judgment was just a flash flood or local sea level rise? Are the martyrs beneath the altar (Revelation 6:9-10) doomed to disappointment when they cry out for vengeance on their blood? Compromise is difficult for Genesis 6-9. Read the chapters! There are significant barriers to old-earth translations of Genesis 1, but they pale in comparison to the task of finding a local flood in Genesis 6-9. Why did God threaten universal destruction? Why did Noah need to waste time on an ark? Why did he need 120 years of lead time? Why does the record state that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered (note the Hebrew emphasis by repetition)? What local flood could last for more than a year? Why use a unique word, mabbul, for a local flood? Why bother with the animals? Even these very elementary objections demonstrate that the local flood concept is an

 

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abysmal interpretation of this text. Then why try? Once again we are faced with an authority divide. Is God’s word an accurate historical record, or does uniformitarian historical geology take precedence? Also, as with most errors, making this one puts Christians squarely on the slippery slope of accumulating inaccuracy. To paraphrase the potato chip jingle, no one can make just one. First comes Genesis 7 & 8. If science has equal authority with the Bible, then the geologic column (which is, it is said, no more than historical science) leaves no room for Noah’s Flood in its 4.5 billion year history, even though the Bible says: And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark (Genesis 7:21-23).

Does this sound like a river valley flooded? Go back and reread Genesis 7-8. Now close your eyes and imagine the entire face of the Earth covered by water, moving in strong currents, waves, and tsunamis. Rain and wind are unhindered by continents and islands. Movements in the Earth’s crust are causing earthquakes, volcanism, and all the energetic activity associated with these phenomena. The recent tragedy in Southeast Asia is a pale shadow of the events of the Flood. Given these kinds of events, would it not be reasonable to expect tremendous geologic activity, such as erosion, volcanism, and sedimentation? If the biblical record is accurate, it would be impossible not to expect all of those things to be associated with the Flood. The rock record should be full of evidence of such an event. But if we accept uniformitarian geology and reject Genesis 7-8, then we must next find a way around Genesis 9. The Bible pictures the Flood as a unique event in world history, sealed by God’s promise that it would never happen again, marked by the famous rainbow. However, if it was a local flood then God has broken that promise innumerable times. The local flood theory and Genesis 9:11-17 combine to accuse God of dishonesty! What more could one say to impeach God’s honor? Do you now see the force of the decision forced by two-value

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logic? If God’s honor and glory are paramount in creation, then this one point alone is sufficient to derail the local flood theory and by implication, point strong doubt at the veracity of modern interpretations of the rock record in the uniformitarian geologic column. As with so many things, the problem is not the physical data, but the template that interpreters bring to the table. Uniformitarian geologists see everything in terms of their axiom. Creationists accept the biblical record as their template, and the same rocks are then interpreted in radically different ways. There is no room for the Genesis Flood in the uniformitarian geologic column because its purpose all along was to eliminate the Flood as an historical event! Once church leaders surrendered, their path became depressingly clear: no Flood, no problem with evolution, no reliability of Genesis, no reliability of the Bible, no truth to Christianity, and no accountability to God. Put that way, one might expect Christians would have seen the battle lines and organized in opposition 200 years ago. Instead, over the past two centuries, Christians have been slow to see and quick to compromise. They have proposed multiple small floods, a local flood, and even (with obviously no knowledge of hydraulics) a “tranquil flood.” No compromise can satisfy both the biblical text and uniformitarian geologic interpretations. After 200 years, it is time to consider that no compromise ever will. In a clash of worldviews; light and darkness, good and evil, and God’s truth and men’s lies can never find harmony. As Paul reminded us in Romans 1, it’s not that men don’t understand; rather, they understand all too well and lock away the truth in the deepest dungeons of their hearts. Conclusion  Using our perspective of seeking God’s glory, honor, and pleasure, we have seen that the question of when God created is not neutral. Interpretations that support billions of years clearly detract from that glory in several ways. The opposite view honors God by elevating His word over the wisdom and knowledge of men, by adhering to the

 

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historical truths taught in it, by upholding his character and providence, and by recognizing His terrible judgment on sin in the Flood⎯the paradigm for our understanding of the end of our own age. Why then do so many people refuse that truth? What should Christians do when surrounded by legions of experts who tell them they are wrong? It’s not the first time. Let’s look at an earlier example.

Chapter 5 

Assyrians As Far as the Eye Can See   

Although we are saddened to see compromise and fear in the modern church, our knowledge of the Bible gives us some perspective and more than a little sympathy; for certainly those attitudes are more common among God’s people than the fearlessness and steadfastness of the heroes of the faith. Sadly, Noah, Abraham, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, the Apostles, and all the post-biblical heroes of Christianity stand out as rare exceptions, not the rule. The real puzzle is how we can defeat our very normal fears and concerns and take a stand for God. Just look at what faces us. All secular institutions of learning and intellect support evolution and billions of years, and most of their faculty and administration are practical atheists if not militantly theoretical ones, too. Even more depressing is the fact that most Christian colleges and seminaries endorse compromise positions of theistic evolution and the geologic ages. What is the lowly person in the pew supposed to do when all the Ph.D.s and Th.D.s are on the other side? I believe that we can take comfort from similar situations found in both the Bible and history. Almost immediately, one thinks of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.29 But let’s look further back at a biblical story that I believe illustrates our own situation. It is the tale of a good king named Hezekiah⎯one of the best that God’s people ever had. 29

 John Foxe [1516‐1587] wrote this famous book, one of the most influential in  English history. It is available online at:   http://www.calvarychapel.com/library/foxe‐john/text/bom.htm#00. 

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Hezekiah lived in uncomfortable times. God’s people had been split by a schism for generations. The northern majority had become utterly corrupt, living comfortably under leaders like Ahab and Jezebel. God had offered them many chances to repent, sending his most imposing prophets with the message, and supporting their words with stunning miracles, even fire from heaven! God had even been gracious enough to defeat the enemies of their evil kings. But their time of judgment finally came, and within a few years of ascending the throne of Judah, Hezekiah saw the neighboring Kingdom of Israel besieged and swallowed by Sennacherib, ruler of the terrifying Assyrian Empire. The Assyrians were not just an average conquering army. They were renowned for both their military ability and their total ruthlessness and cruelty. Their empire had expanded by a series of conquests until they controlled much of the Fertile Crescent and intimidated Egypt. Their armies were large and well-equipped, and included impressive siege equipment. They did not conduct quick raids for booty or food; their goal was total conquest. Conquered peoples were deported or killed. Judah was accustomed to local wars with the Philistines, the Moabites, and the Edomites. Now they were facing an overwhelming force bent on total conquest. The ten tribes of the north were now the “lost tribes” of Israel. It appeared that the other two were facing the same fate. Losing took on a whole new meaning. With the buffers of Syria and Israel wiped away, Judah was now exposed to the ravenous appetite of Sennacherib. To make things worse, Hezekiah ascended the throne of Ahaz, a weak, apostate man who embraced false religion with fervor. For twenty years, the people had followed Ahaz, and not a voice of protest was recorded when he built a copy of an Assyrian altar in the temple of Jehovah. He had seen it on a trip of vassalage to the King of Assyria, who had saved Judah from Syria and Israel. In every sense Ahaz was a failure: militarily, politically, socially, and most importantly, as God’s king⎯a shepherd to His people. Fortunately for Judah, Ahaz’ reign was cut short and God provided His people with a true king after the model of David.

 

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In the third year of Hoshea son of Elah, king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz, king of Judah, began to reign. He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Abi the daughter of Zechariah. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan). He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him. He struck down the Philistines as far as Gaza and its territory, from watchtower to fortified city (II Kings 18:1-8).

Additional details of Hezekiah’s far-reaching religious reforms are provided in II Chronicles 29-31. For the first time in years, the people of God were attempting to follow the Law of Moses to the best of their ability. Our exposure to modern American television would lead us to stop there and sigh, “they lived happily ever after.” That would be a nice story, but it is, after all, the ending of fairy tales. No, once Hezekiah proved himself faithful to God, then God imposed a greater test. One morning, about fourteen years after ascending the throne, Hezekiah woke to find the unstoppable Assyrian army marching at last on Judah. Fortified city after fortified city fell, until Sennacherib parked his gigantic army right outside the walls of Jerusalem. There were Assyrians as far as the eye could see. God’s people were in danger of extinction. The Assyrian leaders spoke to Jerusalem, mocking God and offering an attractive deal that would spare the lives of any who surrendered. Imagine the despair that attacked King Hezekiah. Would the people listen and just give up? Or would the Assyrians attack and ravage Jerusalem regardless of their promises? How could his tiny army fight such a vast and fearsome foe? The Assyrians were so confident that they even offered horses and chariots if Hezekiah could but find a few men to use them!

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But King Hezekiah was made of sterner stuff than most of us. He kept his perspective. There was a sovereign God in Heaven and Hezekiah was His child. With Isaiah the prophet, Hezekiah turned to God in prayer. He did not pray for himself or his people, but he prayed that God’s honor and glory would be upheld, having been impugned by Sennacherib. And God answered. An angel of the Lord visited the camp of the Assyrians, slaughtered most of them, and left Sennacherib to drag the few stragglers back home in disgrace. The Bible even records that Sennacherib’s own sons murdered him shortly thereafter, so great were his defeat and disgrace. What can the story of Hezekiah teach us? I believe that our situation is somewhat similar. God’s people have been split into multiple feuding factions, and the majority of those have become apostate. In America, mainline churches that preached the gospel a few short generations ago are heatedly debating whether or not to ordain actively homosexual ministers and priests. Much of the church worships at the high places of money and success. And in the debate over origins, the “experts” are opposed to the word of God. We could despair simply from what we see in the church if our eyes were not distracted by the larger threat—Assyrians, as far as the eye can see. The modern and postmodern intellectual elites are our present-day Assyrians. Their monolithic empire crosses political and social lines, dominating culture in a way that would turn Sennacherib green with envy. From outright persecution in secular countries like China to more subtle forms in the post-Christian West, these Assyrians rule with arrogance and ruthlessness, suppressing Christian truth on every front. Those who have joined the battle against abortion, the homosexual destruction of marriage and family, rule by lawyer instead of rule by law, or even something so simple as the public display of the Ten Commandments have all have felt the iron fist of the new Assyrians. Few things anger Assyrians more than the advocacy of special creation in the “recent” past. They recognize, and rightly so, that the attempt to reintroduce the historical reliability of the Bible and its God is an attack on the very roots of their worldview. If evolution and the geologic column are considered false, then the fangs of Naturalism

 

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have been pulled. Religion would be out of its comfortable corner and back in the public culture. So they resist it with every trick of propaganda, intimidation, and harassment that they can. But we can learn from Hezekiah. There was nothing on Earth that could have saved Hezekiah and Jerusalem from Sennacherib. But there was Someone above the Earth that both could and did. If we will adopt Hezekiah’s perspective and seek God’s glory and honor above our own, then we will see the Holy Spirit reform us, the church, and (God willing), our nation. Hezekiah’s strength was not military. He was not smarter than Sennacherib in the ways of the world. Judah was not politically sophisticated compared to the Assyrian Empire. Their secret was the revival led by Hezekiah, embraced by the people, and pleasing in God’s sight. When it was time to fight the Assyrians, God was more than pleased to intervene for His children. Hezekiah’s model tells us where to start. God’s people must be willing to increase God’s honor and glory and make that their highest calling—even when it means looking “foolish” in the eyes of the world. When the church embraces the authority of God’s word and finds a passion for spreading the faith across the world, then God will deal with the Assyrians. Some say all that is needed is to preach the gospel. But Jesus told his disciples to make other disciples “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20a). In those few times and places where the whole counsel of God’s word has been made the normative wisdom, human culture has flourished. On the other hand, an anemic and truncated worldview always results in an anemic and truncated church. There are practical things you can do to fight the Assyrians. Pray that God’s glory as Creator and Judge of the Earth would be restored. Teach your own children well, so that their first college science class does not turn them into junior Assyrians. There is no shortage of material highlighting the case against Naturalism and its weapons of evolution and uniformitarianism. A guide to resources can be found at the end of this book.

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Many Christians are now enslaved to Assyrian culture in some way because they do not allow God’s word to rule every aspect of their lives. We all need to increase our understanding of what Jesus said: …If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:31-32).

God freed Hezekiah from the Assyrian army surrounding his city. God’s word can free us from the even larger army of Assyrians who would take away our heritage and truth, and more importantly would rob God of the honor only He deserves. All that is required is for us to have the heart, mind, and will of Hezekiah—a king who treasured God’s glory more than his own life.

 

Chapter 6 

Doxology 

We live in an age that has lost its perspective on God and Christianity. Times of faithfulness and times of apostasy, compromise, and weakness seem to be almost like the seasons. One generation exhibits great faith, the next indulges in idolatry. Abraham had unfaithful sons, as did Isaac, Aaron, Samuel, and David. One generation rebelled in the wilderness; the next followed Joshua and conquered the land. Both in theology and by example, God demonstrates our inability to please Him apart from His grace. But He also calls us to obedience. To obey, we must first correct our perspective. Like the proverbial boiling frog, too many Christians are watching the bubbles form on the bottom of the pan, sweating, but too deeply sunk in worldly ruts to appreciate the depravity of our nation and culture. Much has changed in the time most of us have grown up. It used to be socially correct to attend church and show respect for religion. It used to be unthinkable that our society would murder babies, undermine families, or equate the abhorrence of homosexuality with racial discrimination. Political and civil discourse used to have boundaries of decorum that were at least observed in public. Our society is beginning to look a lot like ancient empires, combining Roman decadence, Persian pride, and Assyrian disregard for life. Like Hezekiah, Christians are greeted at the gates by Assyrians as far as the eye can see. Society thinks in terms of our individual importance and rights, not in terms of God. Words like “honor” and “glory” do not mean as much to the pragmatic modern man, who just wants everything to

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work. Few men are governed by principle. For example, how many today would fight a duel and risk their lives for the sake of personal honor? I am not advocating dueling, but that such an idea is so alien to us illustrates the changes that have occurred in western culture over the past centuries. Unfortunately, part of that foreignness is found in the concept that honor is more important than life. We want nothing to do with that concept, and then we wonder why our age does not produce heroes. When the concept of honor is lost, then our concern for God’s honor cannot help but be diminished. But there is hope. God is on His throne. And quite honestly, many of the church’s defeats have been self-inflicted. If the Spirit would cleanse the church, the gates of hell would not stand against it. For years, Christians have tried to multiply altar calls, put faith in the political process, or rail privately against the outside evil. I would suggest several necessary steps that a faithful few have remembered. First we must understand that God alone will spark renewal and revival. Sometimes we are called to be faithful in apostate times. But we can hope in the examples of sincere prayer and repentance that have historically stirred God to action. Whether renewal comes in a widespread manner or not, we are each called to personal renewal, because in it we both exhibit our respect for God’s honor and our satisfaction in Him above earthly pleasures and pursuits. Finally, for the church at large, Paul supplies the strategy for cultural renovation. In his second letter to the Church in Corinth, Paul provides the biblical basis for the power of ideas. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete (II Corinthians 10:3-6).

What does it mean to “destroy arguments” and “take every thought captive to Christ?” First, it requires that we can identify the arguments that need to be destroyed and that we know Christ well enough to integrate our thought with His. This is not some mystically revealed knowledge; it is the solid knowledge of the Bible and its

 

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derivative theological application to issues of our day. Christians are obligated by these verses (as well as many others) to be knowledgeable of the world around them—to look at their surroundings with understanding. Those ideas that originate from the pit are from the father of falsehood, and therefore flawed with regard to truth. God gives us the privilege of finding and broadcasting those defects. Correspondingly, we can take ideas that emanate from the truth of God and reverse the idolatrous transaction that Paul describes in Romans 1. With respect to origins, this reverse transaction has been desperately needed for two centuries. There is hope. After decades of compromise and surrender, the church is finally beginning to heed the words of Paul. Many books have been written detailing the flaws inherent in biological evolution, and a trickle of them addresses geologic uniformitarianism. More importantly, Christians are beginning to see the connections between these concepts and the worldview of Naturalism. Completing this process by rejecting all of the naturalist worldview could result in theological, philosophical, scientific, and cultural revolutions such as the world has not seen for many long years. But our desire to change our perspective means that we must look beyond the benefits to ourselves, our society, and our church. Christians have the opportunity to set their sights on an even higher concept: the privilege of defending God’s honor and name rather than our own. Where theological apathy or error darkens our churches, Christians have the opportunity to proclaim God’s ownership by creation of all and by redemption of His people. Where culture rails against ethical absolutes, Christians have the opportunity to assert the authority of the Creator and Judge of the Earth to demand and expect obedience to His standard of holiness. Where a culture murders millions of unborn babies in barbaric fashion, Christians have an opportunity to affirm that God created man in His image and likeness, and to support that truth with actions of protest, counsel, adoption, and support of unwed mothers.

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There is no doubt that we live in a day where the opportunity to stand out as a Christian is available to any believer. But the benefits of all of these activities must be subordinated to the greater benefit of honoring our Lord. Praise God from whom all blessings flow Praise Him all creatures here below Praise Him above ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This ancient, simple composition is often sung weekly in many churches worldwide. It becomes old, stale, and rote when it should be new and exciting each time it is sung. If God truly did make all things by the outflowing of His character and for the praise of His glory, then we align ourselves with His ultimate purpose in both creation and providence when we give ourselves to this familiar song. We increase our ability to become one with Him by sharing His own great passion for His own glory. Stop and think through these words. God is the source of all blessings, because He is the source of all things. All blessings flow from God. How similar this language sounds to Jonathan Edwards’ words—remember his illustration of God as an overflowing fountain? All blessings are summed up in the works of creation and providence. Creation is a blessing to us and to angels, but as we now know, primarily to God Himself. His blessedness is manifested and His glory praised by what He has made and our ultimate blessedness will be to share His. The God-centered view that we strive for is found in the middle lines. Both earthly and heavenly created beings praise God, wherever they are, whatever their circumstance. Praise is possible because our satisfaction does not (should not!) depend on our circumstances. How hard it is to see around both good times and bad! Losses tear at us; riches make us complacent. But neither can possibly compare to the glories of God Himself. Part of learning to share that blessedness must be the sharing of His satisfaction in creation. We cannot do that if our understanding of

 

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creation is marred by the impurities of Naturalism. Only a firm conviction that God’s word is true (even when ridiculed by expert atheists) can grant us that sharpness of vision to see God’s hand, His power, His wisdom, and His true appreciation of beauty in everything around us. If we blind ourselves to those, then our connection to the True Vine is stunted. A wondrous attitude towards creation makes it easy to praise the Creator. Seeing the overflow of His wisdom, goodness, power, and creativity in every grass blade, tree leaf, cloud, bird, fish, animal, and in each other, gives us the perspective of praise. Finally, the closing line of the Doxology reminds us that God exists as a triune being. It never hurts to remember that God is completely self-sufficient. He has always been completely happy and satisfied in the fellowship among Father, Son, and Spirit. Our existence and all around us that we enjoy is merely the outflow of His bounty, not the result of some lack or necessity. What an arrogant error to assume that God needs us! How humbling it is to realize that God made us, redeemed us, and will love us forever, simply because He wants to! As we attempt to make our entire lives a doxology to our Creator, we must become active disciples instead of passive pew fillers. Assyrians are at the gate and have been marching through one fortified city after another. Only a passion for God’s glory and honor and the corresponding joy and pleasure that we find only in Him will give us the courage and strength to resist. What does the world have to offer that can possibly match the promise of endless discovery within the love of God Himself? With that future assured, our present can lie in walking in the good works which God has prepared for us (Ephesians 1:10). With regard to the knotty issues of origins, keep you eyes on God’s glory, manifested in His character and in His infallible word. Knowing now the great end for which God created the universe, we can rest in the knowledge that He will fulfill it. Knowing His power is unlimited, we can readily believe that He created all in six days. Knowing that He is righteous and just, we can readily acknowledge His judgment on sin

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in both past and future cataclysms. Trembling at that knowledge, we can swell with gratitude because Jesus is our Ark. If we hold ourselves ready, He will even use us to accomplish His great purposes. When Assyrians proclaim it a lie, then fight for its truth. Opportunities may be large or small. God may simply call you to affirm His truth in your family and church, or He may put you on a university stage, debating an Assyrian general. You never know. But if you are more concerned for God’s honor than you are even for your own life, then rest assured that God will provide all that you need to glorify Him and accomplish His will. Then will you truly enjoy Him forever!

 

Appendix  Selected Scriptures from Edwards’ Dissertation   

Isaiah 44:6 Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Isaiah 48:12 Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, whom I called! I am he; I am the first, and I am the last. Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last…” Revelation 21:6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.” Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Romans 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Colossians 1:16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. Isaiah 48:11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.

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God made a good moral world for His glory  Isaiah 61:3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. Isaiah 43:1-7 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. 4 Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. 5 Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. 6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 60:19-21 The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. 20 Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended. 21 Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. Jeremiah 13:11 For as the loincloth clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen. Ephesians 1:5-6 he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Isaiah 44:23 Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel.

 

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Isaiah 49:3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” John 17:10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. II Thessalonians 1:10-12 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. 11 To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

God’s glory the end of the goodness of the moral part of creation  Philippians 1:10-11 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. John 15:8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. I Peter 4:11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Revelation 11:13 And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. Revelation 14:6-7 Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7 And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.” Revelation 16:9 They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.

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Psalm 22:21-23 Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen! 22 I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: 23 You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! Isaiah 66:19 and I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands afar off, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations. Isaiah 24:15 Therefore in the east give glory to the Lord; in the coastlands of the sea, give glory to the name of the Lord, the God of Israel. Isaiah 25:3 Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. Jeremiah 13:15-16 Hear and give ear; be not proud, for the Lord has spoken. 16 Give glory to the Lord your God before he brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the twilight mountains, and while you look for light he turns it into gloom and makes it deep darkness. Daniel 5:23 but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored. Romans 15:5-6 May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, 6 that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. I Peter 2:12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Romans 3:7 But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?

 

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God’s glory the end of particular graces: faith repentance, charity,  thanksgiving, praise.  Romans 4:20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God… Philippians 2:11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Joshua 7:19 Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the Lord God of Israel and give praise to him. And tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.” II Corinthians 8:19 And not only that, but he has been appointed by the churches to travel with us as we carry out this act of grace that is being ministered by us, for the glory of the Lord himself and to show our good will. Psalm 50:23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God! I Corinthians 6:20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. We are instructed to seek God’s glory as the highest end I Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. I Peter 4:11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Leviticus 10:3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace. Ezekiel 28:22 and say, Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I am against you, O Sidon, and I will manifest my glory in your midst. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments in her and manifest my holiness in her…

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The best part of any moral goodness is glorifying God  Romans 16:27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. Galatians 1:4-5 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. II Timothy 4:18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Hebrews 13:21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Philippians 4:20 To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. II Peter 3:18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Jude 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. Revelation 1:5-6 and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. I Chronicles 16:28-29 Ascribe to the Lord, O clans of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! 29 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come before him! Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness… Psalm 29:1-2 Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. 2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.

 

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Psalm 57:5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth! Psalm 72:18-19 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. 19 Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen! Psalm 115:1 Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Revelation 4:9-11 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twentyfour elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Revelation 7:12 saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” Isaiah 6:2-3 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” Luke 2:14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” Christ sought God’s glory as his highest end John 7:18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. John 12:27-28 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” John 17:1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…

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God’s redemption ends in His glory  John 12:23-24 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. John 17:4-5 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. John 13:31-32 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. Philippians 2:6-11 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. John 12:23, 28 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” II Corinthians 4:14-15 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. Psalm 79:9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake! Isaiah 44:23 Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel.

 

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Isaiah 48:10-11 Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. 11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another. The end of worship is God’s glory Haggai 1:8 Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. II Corinthians 1:20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. Numbers 14:20-23 Then the Lord said, “I have pardoned, according to your word. 21 But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, 22 none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, 23 shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. Exodus 14:17-18 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen. Ezekiel 28:22 and say, Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I am against you, O Sidon, and I will manifest my glory in your midst. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I execute judgments in her and manifest my holiness in her… Ezekiel 39:13 All the people of the land will bury them, and it will bring them renown on the day that I show my glory, declares the Lord God. Romans 9:22-23 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— II Thessalonians 1:9-10 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

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Creation glorifies God  ‘ Psalm 8 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. 9 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 148:13 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven.

Regard for God’s Name is equivalent to His glory  I Samuel 12:22 For the Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Psalm 23:3 He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Psalm 31:3 For you are my rock and my fortress; and for your name's sake you lead me and guide me… Psalm 109:21 But you, O God my Lord, deal on my behalf for your name's sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver me! I John 2:12 I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. Psalm 25:11 For your name's sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great. Psalm 79:9 Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name's sake!

 

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Jeremiah 14:7 “Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name's sake; for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against you.

 

Bibliography   

Adler, M.J. 1965. The Conditions of Philosophy. Atheneum Press, New York. Aksu, A.E., R.N. Hiscott, P.J. Mudie, A. Rochon, M.A. Kaminski, T. Abrajano, and D. Ya’ar. 2002. Persistent Holocene outflow from the Black Sea to the eastern Mediterranean contradicts Noah’s Flood hypothesis. GSA Today 12(5):4-10. Behe, M.J. 1996. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. The Free Press, New York. Chittick, D.E. 1998. The Puzzle of Ancient Man. Creation Compass, Newburg, OR. Cooper, B. 1995. After the Flood. New Wine Press, Chichester, England. Cullmann, O. 1964. Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History (third edition, translated by Floyd V. Filson). The Westminster Press, Philadelphia. Dembski, W.A. 2004. The design revolution: answering the toughest questions about intelligent design. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. Down, D. 2001. Searching for Moses. Technical Journal 15(1):53-57. Edwards, J. 1765. A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World. http://www.jonathanedwards.com/theology.htm Foxe, J. 1563. The Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous Dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein are comprehended and described the great Persecution and horrible Troubles that have been wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, Epeciallye in this Realme of England and Scotland, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande to the time now present. Gathered and collected according to tile true Copies and Wrytinges certificatorie as well of the Parties themselves that Suffered, as also out of die Bishop’s Registers, which were the Doers thereof, by John Foxe, commonly known as the Book of Martyrs. http://gospelweb.net/foxeindex.htm. Froede, C.R., Jr. 2002. Uniformitarian scientists pull the plug on the Black Sea flood. Creation Matters 7(4):3-4. ___. 2001. Is the Black Sea flood the Flood of Genesis? Creation Matters 6(1):1-4. Geikie, A. 1897. The Founders of Geology. Macmillan, New York. Glover, W. 1984. Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture. Mercer University Press, Macon, GA.

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Sarfati, J. 2004. Refuting Compromise. Master Books, Green Forest, AR. Schaeffer, F.A. 1982. The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer (five volumes). Crossway Books, Westchester, IL. Schirrmacher, T. 2000. The Galileo affair: history or heroic hagiography? Technical Journal 14(1):91-100. Schlossberg, H. 1983. Idols for Destruction. Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN. Schlossberg, H. and M. Olasky. 1987. Turning Point: A Christian Worldview Declaration. Crossway Books. Westchester, IL. Sire, J. 1976. The Universe Next Door. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. Sproul, R.C. 1977. Knowing Scripture. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. Stark, R. 2003. For the Glory of God. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. ___. 2001. One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Walker, T. 2002. The Black Sea flood may evaporate completely. Technical Journal 16(3):3-5. ___. 2000. The Black Sea flood: Definitely not the Flood of Noah. Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 14(1):40-44. Wells, D. 1993. No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI. Whitcomb, J.C. and H.M. Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood. Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI. Woodmorappe, J. 1999. The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods. Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.

Resources

Good resources for answering crucial questions about creation can be found at: •

The Creation Research Society on the Internet at .

•

The Institute for Creation Research .

•

Creation Ministries International .

•

Answers in Genesis .

All of these organizations have numerous books, written for all levels, as well as video and DVD presentations. Each publishes a regular journal or newsletter: Acts and Facts (ICR), Creation (CMI), Answers (AiG), and Creation Matters (CRS), as well as more technical material in the Journal of Creation (CMI), the Creation Research Society Quarterly, and the Answers Research Journal (AiG)..

 

About Reasonable Hope Ministry   

Reasonable Hope Ministry is a non-profit charitable organization that exists to teach others about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to present His will for their lives as revealed by the Holy Scriptures. It is governed by a board of directors, and includes the outreach, speaking, and writing ministry of Dr. Gordon K. Reed, and the research, writing, and speaking ministry of Dr. John K. Reed. For additional information, please contact:

P.O. Box 26  Summerton, SC 29148  <www.reasonablehope.com> 

Other Books from Reasonable Hope Ministry  Books by Dr. Gordon K. Reed  Westminster Daily Devotional.

A year of family devotional lessons that leads through the Westminster Shorter Catechism, showing the ongoing relevance of sound theology to our modern lives.

Plain Talk about Christian Doctrine.

A pastor’s perspective on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, with the systematic teaching of that great document interwoven with practical lessons from decades of Christian ministry.

The Ten Commandments

Dr. Reed explains how the unchanging wisdom of God’s Ten Commandments can enrich the life of the most modern Christian.

Ministry: Career or Calling?

Is Christian ministry just another white-collar profession, or is it a unique calling from God. This modern parable illustrates the modern errors of the “professional” approach.

Christmas: Triumph over Tragedy

Developed from a series of Christmas sermons, this short book takes an in-depth look at the central characters of the incarnation, showing modern believers how they, too, can become a part of God’s great kingdom.

Books by Dr. John K. Reed  Plain Talk about Genesis.

Using the Presbyterian Church in America as an example, Dr. Reed explains for Christian laymen the origins debate and what is at stake in those discussions.

Natural History in the Christian Worldview

Interpretations about natural history rest on worldviews. Any Christian thinker can discern truth from falsehood in this area by comparing those worldviews. (Published by the Creation Research Society).

Plate Tectonics: A Different View (editor)

Technical critique of the dominant paradigm of modern geology from a biblical perspective. (Published by the Creation Research Society). The North American Midcontinent Rift System: An Interpretation within the Biblical Worldview

Technical description and interpretation of one of the largest geological features in North America. (Published by the Creation Research Society).

The Coming Wrath

The first novel in the new Lost Worlds series, The Coming Wrath recounts the last days of the antediluvian earth.

Mabbul

The second novel in the new Lost Worlds series, Mabbul tells the story of the great Flood and the deliverance of Noah’s family from that judgment.

The Geologic Column: Perspectives within Diluvial Geology

Symposium among creationists of the role of the geologic column and time scale in Flood geology. (Co-edited with Michael J. Oard for the Creation Research Society).

Rock Solid Answers

Detailed answers to the most common geological objections to the Genesis Flood by a group of creationist scientists. (Co-edited with Michael J. Oard for the Creation Research Society).