The War Against God
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The War Against God
The War Against God
begins — “Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker...”
In , we see the serpent
There is a war against God. It is a rebellion against the Creator’s sovereign rule. I want you to keep that in mind because that’s the setting of our considerations of the book of Genesis this morning.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
That’s clear enough, right? Either you believe it or not.
In the beginning — When? the beginning, the beginning of what is, the beginning of everything.
God —
How do you know? How does anyone know?
What we need to understand is that we’re talking about the beginning — “In the beginning...”
How do you know what you know?
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.
You must have knowledge. But understand that the statement concerns the beginning — “In the beginning...”
Think about this.
The Beginning. We’re not talking about the beginning of this day or this week. We’re not talking about the beginning of August, that was only a few days ago. We’re not talking even about the beginning of the year. We’re not talking about the beginning of the 21st century. We’re not talking about the beginning of this country. We’re talking the beginning of the beginning.
How do you know what was “in the beginning” of all things?
You can only know if someone were there.
And there was someone and we’re told — GOD! And God said. He spoke and it happened.
But there’s a war against the only eyewitness to the beginning. And listen, God is more than an eyewitness — He’s the Originator of all things. He’s the Creator.
Let’s talk about this war. But let me draw out the battleground. It’s not really the secularists or the evolutionist that are the problem. We know their issue. We know they don’t want God. It’s in the church. It’s in the church.
I. It questions the Authority of the Word of God.
I. It questions the Authority of the Word of God.
A study was done by Answers in Genesis in which that asked the question — “Would you consider yourself to be a Young-Earth or Old-Earth Christian?
Naturalism is the view that every law and every force operating in the universe is natural rather than moral, spiritual, or supernatural. Naturalism is inherently antiTheistic and rejects the concept of a personal God. The proponents of naturalism like to say naturalism is the very essence of scientific objectivity, that their system stands on pure scientific facts and not on blind faith.
Take for example Carl Sagan, probably the best known scientific celebrity of the past few decades. He was a renowned astronomer and overtly antagonistic to God. He believed everything in the universe has a natural cause and a natural explanation. He looked at the universe, saw its greatness, and concluded nothing could possibly be greater.
“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
Sagan’s view of the universe was actually a kind of naturalistic pantheism. His worldview was evolution. And Sagan helped the concept of evolution extend into every aspect of life.
We generally think of evolution in biology, geology, and astronomy, but it permeates every area of our lives.
Julian Huxley stresses the influence of evolution:
Inorganic subjects such as the life-history of stars and the formation of the chemical elements on the one hand, and on the other hand subjects like linguistics, social anthropology, and comparative law and religion, began to be studied from an evolutionary angle, until today we are enabled to see evolution as a universal and all-pervading process.
Ernst Mayr, Harvard scientist, wrote:
I’m taking a new look at the Darwinian revolution of 1859, perhaps the most fundamental of all intellectual revolutions in the history of mankind. It not only eliminated man’s anthropocentrism, but affected every metaphysical and ethical concept, if consistently applied.
Listen to this quote from one of the nation’s top ecologists:
Most enlightened persons now accept as a fact that everything in the cosmos — from heavenly bodies to human beings — has developed and continues to develop through evolutionary processes. The great religions of the West have come to accept a historical view of creation. Evolutionary concepts are applied also to social institutions and to the arts. Indeed, most political parties, as well as schools of theology, sociology, history, or arts, teach these concepts and make them the basis of their doctrines.
Most evident of this battle today on all fronts is seen from theistic evolutionist, and paleontologist, the Roman Catholic priest, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin:
“Evolution is general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must hence forward BOW and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow.
Evolution is not merely a biological theory. It is a worldview diametrically opposed to God.
(And they asked this question to the President, the Vice-President, the Science Department head and the Religious Department head of fairly conservative and mainline Christian Colleges and Seminaries).
Evolution permeates the Life Sciences
The majority considered themselves Old-Earth.
Most scientist believe that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. “We know evolution is true, even though we don’t know how it works, and have never seen it happen!”
When they divided it up between the Religion Department and the Science Department, what they found was
Evolution permeates Origin and History of the Earth Sciences
Nearly 78% in the Religious department believed in an Old-Earth, nearly 15% believed in a Young-Earth.
Geology, archaeology, paleontology, etc. insists on several billion year old earth all based on a number of unprovable assumptions first posited by Charles Lyell, the father of historical geology.
Nearly 35% in the Science department believed in an Old-Earth and 57% believed in Young-Earth.
S.M. Stanley, leading paleontologist of John Hopkins writes:
What’s absolutely incredible to me is that from this data, in Christian colleges and Seminaries, the Science department is more likely to believe the account of creation in Genesis than the Religious Department.
“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition.”
BUT! Wait a minute!
BUT! Wait a minute!
Does it really matter if we believe the Genesis account of creation as it is written?
The study of biology shows no evidence whatever of evolution occuring in the present, and the study of geology and paleontology show no evidence that it ever occured in the past.
And that’s a good question, it’s just not the right question.
Evolution permeates the Physical Sciences
THE RIGHT QUESTION IS:
Does it really matter if we believe what God said?
Physics, chemistry, and astronomy scientists have developed fantastic explanation in support of evolution of the universe, the elements, the stellar heavens, complex molecules, and life. As Steven Wienberg, leading astrophysicist admits:
You see, because it’s a question of Authority. It’s a question of Authority. The Bible tells us one thing about origin and secular evolutionists tells us something completely different.
“It is a bit disturbing that all these estimates of the ages and compositions of the stars rest on elaborate calculations of what is going on inside them, but all that we observe is that light emitted from their surfaces.”
The Bible tells us God created everything in 6 days. Secular evolutionists tell us everything evolved over millions and billions of years. Let’s look at this for a moment.
Secular Evolutionists
Secular Evolutionists
Listen — the secularist and evolutionist would have us believe in the process of evolution, but they can’t prove it. There is no empirical evidence, no scientific evidence of evolution. You don’t see one animal changing into another animal today. You don’t see any transitions from one animal to another. You don’t see life producing new information to go into our genes. You don’t see matter producing life by natural processes. Evolution is an impossible process. It simply doesn’t exist. It has never been seen or experienced. So, what do they say, “You don’t see evolution because it takes millions and millions of years.”
And yet, evolution is almost universally accepted as a fact in all the natural sciences.
George Wald, Noble Prize American biochemist, said this:
Evolution and the Behavioral Sciences
“Time is in fact the hero of the plot…What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible becomes probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.”
As Henry Morris stated, “There is probably no academic field of study and application more thoroughly saturated with evolutionary thinking than psychology.” Ironically, “psychology” means “study of the soul,” but modern psychologist don’t even believe in the soul.
For the secularist — time is one of their gods, because time performs the miracle.
D. Goleman writes of the founder of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, “Freud concluded that mental disorders were the vestiges of behavior that had bee appropriate in earlier stages of evolution.” A large majority of leading psychologists are atheists or pantheists — J.B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, Jung, Adler.
You can have all the time you want but matter will never produce brand new information to get added into the genome. Adaptation acts on the genetic diversity already present in living creation. You never see new information to evolve one kind to another kind. And genetics is one area that secularist have no answers.
Peter Breggin, practicing psychiatrist observed:
In his book, The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, A. E. Wilder-Smith demonstrated the absurdity of evolution on the basis of one great reality — the encoded information of DNA of living organisms. Every living organism has in its DNA, that’s the genetic material, whether it’s one cell or the cells of a man — and everything in between, all of what makes up that living organism and all the operations of every living thing is dependent upon that encoded information. Listen — every living thing has a completely different code. Darwin had no clue of this stuff. There was no genetic study when he wrote his Origin of Species. He didn’t know about DNA and chromosomes.
“The average psychiatrist has more power to do harm in the lives of individuals than most religious leaders on Earth…Especially among psychiatrists, suicide, depression, drug addiction, and alcoholism are notoriously rife.”
But there are one thousand million bits of information in one living organism and that information is encoded in that living organism and determines the nature, the growth, the development and the death of billions of cells in that living organism. And that’s the big issue nailing the nail in the coffin of evolution — the study of the origin of information.
The problem is human behavior problems do not stem from an animal ancestry, as Freud and most others alleged — the problem with every person is sin and rebellion against God. Men and women are not animalistic. Each person has an eternal soul, destined for heaven or hell.
Where did the information come from? Where did the code come from?
Evolution permeates Society
A monkey has monkey code, and the DNA, the genetics just keeps making the monkey behave like a monkey. There’s no code in there to turn the monkey into a man.
Atheist and founder of modern sociology eide at
From August Comt’s all-powerful state enforcing laws, to Karl Marx’s Communism to Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism to Francis Galton’s Eugenics (1st cousin of Darwin) who’s stated goal was to improve the human race, by giving “the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.” This became the basis of Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany.
Listen to A. E. Wilder-Smith.
Hitler saw in evolutionary theory the scientific justification for his personal view just the same as social Darwinists. Evolution was behind all Nazi thought from beginning to end. Evolution is survival of the what? Fittest. Hitler sought to play out his evolutionary role. Listen to Hitler’s quote:
“There was one great aspect of reality about which Darwin, and indeed everyone of his epic, knew nothing. I’m referring to the modern science of information theory; for if a primeval kind of amoeba is to develop up to a primate, that primeval cell will have to gather all sorts of new information on how to make kidneys, livers, four-chamber hearts, cerebra and cerebella.”
“I regard Christianity as the most fatal, seductive lie that ever existed.”
From where is this one-celled living organism going to collect the needed information to develop into a man?
And from from Mein Kampf, My Struggle:
It doesn’t exists. Evolution is nonexistent.
“He
But we keep believing it because Evolution is Science.
But here’s the thing — Evolution is not science.
Science
Science
Science at it’s most basic definition is knowledge. Science is useful at observing and explaining the natural world. We can observe the world around us. The Scientific Method is to observe, test, repeat — observe, test, repeat — observe, test, repeat. And we can observe, test, repeat that which is presently around us. But we cannot observe, test, repeat THE BEGINNING.
Evolution is actually anti-science. It does not observe, test, repeat, Evolution is a faith-based philosophy of naturalism. Naturalism simply means there’s no supernatural — everything can be explained by random, non-purposeful material processes. Evolution violates the law of biogenesis. Louis Pasteur established the law of biogenesis which states complex living things come only from other living things, by means of reproduction. That is, life does not spontaneously arise from non-living material.
But see people have been programmed to believe given enough time, anything can happen. This is why millions and billions of years is so important to the evolutionary philosophy.
But here’s the rub —
This
What does the Bible say?
The Bible actually tells us about origin, and again — Genesis means origin. The Bible says
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
God created the heavens and the earth — In the beginning. So we have a clear statement of origin — In the beginning. Then the Bible explains to us the time frame of Creation. It’s not millions and billions of years — but 6 Days!
“But we really don’t know how long a Day is!”
The only place they don’t know what a day is in .
Isn’t that amazing? Why?
Let’s look at a Day in briefly.
The Hebrew word for Day in is Yom.
What does Yom mean?
What
Most words have two or more meanings depending on context.
Listen to this sentence.
Back in my grandfather’s day it took 10 days to drive across the country during the day.
Did you understand that the word Day had three different meanings there?
Or I could say —
Some of you are sitting at the back with sore backs sitting against the back of the pew and you came back. Now we understand that don’t we? Yes because we understand the context.
Day in English has different meanings and the word Yom has different meanings in Hebrew. It depends on the context, right?
6 Wail! For the day of the Lord is near. It will come like destruction from the Almighty.
The word Day, doesn’t mean an ordinary day, it means the time of the Lord.
The Hebrew word Yom the word for day can have various meanings. It can mean time, it can mean year, it can also mean — Day. In fact, major meaning of the word day is — Day.
So, it’s true that the word day can mean something other than an ordinary day — but it can also mean Day.
When does the word Day mean Day, an ordinary 24 hour Day?
I have never hear anyone question what the word Day means when God commanded Joshua to march around Jericho, or when Jonah was in the fish.
In Hebrew Lexicons Brown-Driver-Briggs lists Yom as an ordinary 24 hour evening and morning day in , , , , , and 31.
The Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament also defines day in those verses as an ordinary 24 hour day.
The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament lists the meaning of the word day as of 24 hours and the first reference in the Bible for that definition is .
Listen to this.
Listen to this.
Outside of ,
When the word Day is used with a number 410 times and ALWAYS it means a 24 hour day.
When the phrase Evening and Morning together without the word Day 38 times — it ALWAYS means a 24 hour day.
When you have Evening or Morning with the word Day, 23 times — it ALWAYS means a 24 hour day.
When the word Night is used with Day — 52 times — it ALWAYS means an ordinary 24 hour day.
Let’s go to Genesis 1
Look at again.
Vs 5 — “Evening came, and then morning: the first DAY.”
Vs 8 — “Evening came, and then morning: the second DAY.”
Vs 13 — “Evening came, and then morning: the third DAY.”
Vs 19 — “Evening came, and then morning: the fourth DAY.”
Vs 23 — “Evening came, and then morning: the fifth DAY.”
Vs 31 — “Evening came, and then morning: the sixth DAY.”
Look at the formula used: Evening, Morning, Number, Day. Any one of these would make it a 24 hour day.
Is there a point to this?
I think the Lord knew this would be an issue and this is a no brainer. You have to purposefully ignore the text.
Think about this.
Where do we get our 7 day week?
We get our day from the rotation of the earth.
We get our month from the moon’s orbit around the earth.
We get our year from the earth’s orbit around the sun.
Where do we get our 7 day week?
The 7 day week comes from the Bible. So, why is everyone participating if a day is not a day. How hypocritical! Not a 24 hour day in , but they get up every Monday morning and go to work.
Here’s something to think about
Here’s something to think about.
If God created everything in 6 billion years and rested a billion years…Try that on your boss. I can work this year because I’m in the billion years Rest period now. That’s ridiculous.
8 Dear friends, don’t let this one thing escape you: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.
It comes down to what God said He did. It’s the authority of the Word of God.
Now — I’m never surprised at the secularist not accepting the Word of God because they have suppressed the truth as tells us.
Old Earth Christians
Old Earth Christians
But the problem is when it comes to Christians.
So, let’s go back to our initial question:
Does it matter if it were 6 days or millions and billions of years?
“You know there are the issues of homosexuality, abortion, pornography, gay marriage.” Let me ask you a question:
Why do you believe abortion is murder? Why do you believe homosexuality is sin?
It’s because the same Bible that tells you that tell you that God created everything in 6 days. And not to believe what the Bible says about creation is to use outside ideas to interpret the Bible. You won’t do that about these hot issues. You wont do that about the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ, but you will about creation. That’s the issue with the 6 days. So, back in the 1700s and 1800s, theologians tried to fit what secular humanists who said — No God, millions and billions of years — Theologians tried to fit it into the creation story. So, they tried to put them before , or between verse 1 and verse 2 or they tried to make each day an age of long period of time. So, then off it went. The door of compromise was opened and they came up with all kinds of things to fit millions and billions of years into a text that so clearly says 6 24 hour days.
Gap theory
But
Day-Age theory
Theistic Evolution
Day-Gap-Day
Framework Hypothesis
Progressive Creation
Adam as a mere metaphor for Israel
Cosmic Temple Inauguration view
Humans from animals with amnesia (millions of years of death and bloodshed and God took two ape creatures and put them in the Garden and made them into Adam and Eve and gave them amnesia so that they wouldn’t remember death and bloodshed).
These are Christians trying to fit millions and billions of years into Genesis. The Bible says 6 days but it can’t mean that because of Science.
Listen to these present day examples.
Dr. William Lane Craig when asked on the Michael Coren Show “How old is the world?” — “Best estimates today are around 13.7 billion years or so.”
Michael Coren then responds — “This is good. This is a position I can embrace because there are people who will sit here and say no it’s 6 and half thousand years. That is not a tenable position.”
Craig — “I don’t think it’s plausible. The arguments I give are right in line with main stream science. I’m not bucking up against mainstream science in presenting these arguments. Rather I’m going with the flow of what contemporary cosmology and astrophysics supports.
J.P. Moreland, Professor at Talbot School of Theology Biola University.
J.P. Moreland, Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology Biola University.
“There are areas of difficulty. There’s evidence for the theory of evolution and it’s hard to square some parts of this theory of evolution with the early chapters of Genesis. There’s evidence for an old universe. I happen to favor an old universe, but for those who hold to a recent universe and the days of Genesis are 6 24 hours of creation. Again we haven’t found a lot of archaeological evidence yet for a universal flood of Noah.”
You see what he said? The millions of years are a problem for the early chapters of Genesis. No! The early chapters of Genesis shows the millions of years is the problem. He takes what men say above what God said. The attack is against God. He questions the infallible God rather than fallible man.
These two are Biblical scholars.
Dr. John Sailhamer, former Professor Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. This is a SBC Seminary who “teach in accordance with and not contrary to the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.” Sailhamer wrote in his book Genesis Unbound: A Provocative New Look at the Creation Account.
“The many biological eras (millions of years) would also fit within ‘the beginning’ of , including the long ages during which the dinosaurs roamed the earth. By the time human beings were created on the sixth day of the week, the dinosaurs already could have flourished and become extinct — all during the ‘beginning’ recorded in .”
Sailhamer has accepted the millions of years.
Then John Piper who takes Sailhamer’s view said this about Sailhamer’s view.
“It has the advantage of saying that the earth is billions of years old if it wants to be. Whatever science says it is, it is.”
When asked if he accepts old earth and evolution.
“There seems to be two viable biblical views for me…One is young earth because it seems to me the natural reading of is 24 hour days not Day Age. And two, the view that John Sailhamer wrote in Genesis Unbound, which says that all of creation happened in verses 1 and 2. It may be as old as 4 trillion years, as far as he’s concerned. And what was happening in each day was not the bringing into being of the earth in it’s various forms but rather, the ordering and structuring of things, which allows for 24 hour days, but also allows for old earth. I lean that way. I don’t believe in evolution as the way that Adam came to be human. God created Adam from the dust of the ground. I think he’s unique as the father of all humanity, Adam and Eve. And that he’s not the product of evolutionary process. I can’t make that jive with the way the text reads. I think it’s very important that Adam be a historical figure because that’s the way he’s treated by the other biblical writers.”
That is just amazing. The natural meaning of Genesis, but then he believes old earth. What John Piper has a particular hermeneutical principle that he would never apply in the rest of the Bible. Why? Because of science.
5 Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him.
6 Don’t add to His words, or He will rebuke you, and you will be proved a liar.
And then it gets as bad as Andy Stanley, who is the 5th most influential pastor in America.
Finally, Andy Stanley, the 5th most influential pastor.
“When religion and science conflict, at the end of the day, if you are an honest person — Science must win.”
“The foundation of our faith is not the Scripture. The foundation of our faith is not the fallibility of the Bible. The foundation of our faith is something that happened in history. And the issue is always — Who is Jesus?”
Martin Luther
How do you know who Jesus is? Anything outside of the Bible is not the true Jesus.
“The ‘Days’ of Creation were ordinary days in length. We must understand that these days were actual days, contrary to the opinion of the holy fathers. Whenever we observe that the opinions of the fathers disagree with Scripture, we reverently
You see the issue is one of Authority. They’re throwing out the Authority of the Bible for the Authority of so called Science, which is nothing more than fallible men’s opinions.
But listen — this is the War Against God.
And many Christians will say, “Well, couldn’t God have used evolution?”
It’s not a question of what God could have done. It’s a matter of what God said!
This War Against God was started by the serpent in the Garden.
3 But about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said, ‘You must not eat it or touch it, or you will die.’ ”
1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Did God really say?
If you can’t trust what God said in , then you can’t trust what God said anywhere in the Bible.
2 “The Lord who made the earth, the Lord who forms it to establish it, Yahweh is His name, says this:
3 Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know.
You see — If verse 2 is not true, then verse 3 is not true.
Aren’t you glad the Bible didn’t begin like this.
“I know you’re probably not going to believe this but — In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Evolution is a false religion. It’s not science. It’s a religion for people who suppress the truth of God and what He said, so they don’t have to answer to Him as judge of their sin. It’s a religion for people who want their sin in all of it’s wickedness.
For even though they knew God, they didn’t honor Him as God or give thanks.
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
Romans 1:22
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Let’s Pray.
Father, we understand this is an important issue because it is war against You and against Your Word. You have said You created everything in 6 days. Give us a firm resolute and strong confidence that Your Word is true, that no Scripture comes by private interpretation, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Help us to know You by who You are as You revealed to us in Your Word. You framed the worlds by Your Word and You did it just like You said — Evening came and then morning: the first day, the second day and so on. We are overwhelmed at Your Greatness, the vastness of Your wisdom, Your power, Your mercy on us. We thank You in Jesus name and for His glory. And the people said, Amen.