Creation versus Evolution
Recently I was listening to a prominent Adventist Speaker talk about the importance of knowing the history of Christianity. He said that we also need to know Christian History in the light of the fulfillment of prophecy. He went to Revelation 11 and identified the beast that comes out of the pit, France, during the French revolution. What was happening then? The French rejected anything that had to do with God in reaction to thousands of years of Catholic oppression. The concept of God that the Roman Catholic had presented through all those years was untenable to the French intellectual elite. How can God be a God of love, justice, and peace, and stand by observing all the suffering, injustice, and violence in the world?
Furthermore, how can God be a God of grace and forgiveness and yet be so cruel to punish sinners for eternity? How can God say He is for the poor, while the wealthy nobility claimed to be favored by Him even when they were abusive and despotic toward their fellow men? The picture of tyrannical and punitive God did not make sense to the French, so they rejected His existence. As we can see, modern atheism is not born out of scientific research and advancements, but out of theological concerns.
This rejection of God and the Bible then posed a challenge to explain our humanity and the planet's origin. However, the most popular theory did not emerge out of a concern to give a scientific alternative to how all began. But as a necessity to understand Creation from a picture of God that was untenable to Charles Darwin.
Contrary to popular conceptions, Charles Darwin began his theory of Evolution from a theological premise. He expressed it like this: "There seems to me," wrote Darwin, "too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that the cat should play with mice."
Of course, a "beneficent and omnipotent God" did no such thing. But, Darwin did not conceive that maybe there was a beneficent and omnipotent God that would allow Sin to run its course for redemption. Darwin – and the French before him – had no clue about the Great Controversy.
Darwin reasoned just as the French some half a century before him: God cannot exist. Therefore, thought Darwin, without a God that speaks things into existence, things must have evolved. And the way they must have developed is by natural selection and survival of the fittest (mostly adaptability, not necessarily strength).
Darwin's theory posed a challenge for many Christian thinkers who thought that what Ellen White calls science so-called, had valid points in Evolution, so they merged both methods into Theistic Evolution. This theory says that God used Evolution to create the world. Meaning, the 7-day creation story is nothing but a metaphor to describe what God did for millions of years. In essence, they propose that God created the world or the universe, left it on its own to develop for a given period, and reappeared to bestow a "soul" on the humans who had evolved while He was away.
Darwin'stheory poses other problems. Among other things, it negates the origin of Sin and the need for redemption. It also converts the gospels into fairy tales. If God did not speak, and it was done (Psalm 33: 9), Christ could not have done it either. If there were no miracles, then there is no resurrection, and therefore any hope, for as Paul says, without the resurrection, we work in vain (1 Corinthians 15: 14).
The Bible is clear about the literality and legitimacy of the Creation story. Take for example Hebrews 11: 3,
Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Paul here is clear that things did not evolve; they did not appear out of things that existed before. God's Word made them appear. God spoke, and it was done (Psalm 33: 9). The following verses insist that the Genesis narrative was real,
Colossians 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
Colossians 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him, all things consist.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:2 The same was at the beginning with God.
John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
The following quotes show that throughout all her ministry, Ellen G. White was uncompromising in her rejection of the theory of Evolution. She wrote,
"It is the worst kind of infidelity; for with many who profess to believe the record of creation, it is infidelity in disguise."—The Signs of the Times, March 20, 1879.
"[S]hall we, for the privilege of tracing our descent from germs and mollusks and apes, consent to cast away that statement of Holy Writ, so grand in its simplicity, 'God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him'? Genesis 1:27."—Education, p. 130.
"When the Lord declares that He made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, He means the day of twenty-four hours, which He has marked off by the rising and setting of the sun."— (Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, p. 136).
You can see that to a believer, Creation should not be a theory, but a fact. Just as Creation is a fact, so is the Cross, since they are intimately related. God displays His love in both events. You cannot believe in one and reject the other. That would be foolish.
Raul Diaz
Recently I was listening to a prominent Adventist Speaker talk about the importance of knowing the history of Christianity. He said that we also need to know Christian History in the light of the fulfillment of prophecy. He went to Revelation 11 and identified the beast that comes out of the pit, France, during the French revolution. What was happening then? The French rejected anything that had to do with God in reaction to thousands of years of Catholic oppression. The concept of God that the Roman Catholic had presented through all those years was untenable to the French intellectual elite. How can God be a God of love, justice, and peace, and stand by observing all the suffering, injustice, and violence in the world?
Furthermore, how can God be a God of grace and forgiveness and yet be so cruel to punish sinners for eternity? How can God say He is for the poor, while the wealthy nobility claimed to be favored by Him even when they were abusive and despotic toward their fellow men? The picture of tyrannical and punitive God did not make sense to the French, so they rejected His existence. As we can see, modern atheism is not born out of scientific research and advancements, but out of theological concerns.
This rejection of God and the Bible then posed a challenge to explain our humanity and the planet's origin. However, the most popular theory did not emerge out of a concern to give a scientific alternative to how all began. But as a necessity to understand Creation from a picture of God that was untenable to Charles Darwin.
Contrary to popular conceptions, Charles Darwin began his theory of Evolution from a theological premise. He expressed it like this: "There seems to me," wrote Darwin, "too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that the cat should play with mice."
Of course, a "beneficent and omnipotent God" did no such thing. But, Darwin did not conceive that maybe there was a beneficent and omnipotent God that would allow Sin to run its course for redemption. Darwin – and the French before him – had no clue about the Great Controversy.
Darwin reasoned just as the French some half a century before him: God cannot exist. Therefore, thought Darwin, without a God that speaks things into existence, things must have evolved. And the way they must have developed is by natural selection and survival of the fittest (mostly adaptability, not necessarily strength).
Darwin's theory posed a challenge for many Christian thinkers who thought that what Ellen White calls science so-called, had valid points in Evolution, so they merged both methods into Theistic Evolution. This theory says that God used Evolution to create the world. Meaning, the 7-day creation story is nothing but a metaphor to describe what God did for millions of years. In essence, they propose that God created the world or the universe, left it on its own to develop for a given period, and reappeared to bestow a "soul" on the humans who had evolved while He was away.
Darwin'stheory poses other problems. Among other things, it negates the origin of Sin and the need for redemption. It also converts the gospels into fairy tales. If God did not speak, and it was done (Psalm 33: 9), Christ could not have done it either. If there were no miracles, then there is no resurrection, and therefore any hope, for as Paul says, without the resurrection, we work in vain (1 Corinthians 15: 14).
The Bible is clear about the literality and legitimacy of the Creation story. Take for example Hebrews 11: 3,
Hebrews 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Paul here is clear that things did not evolve; they did not appear out of things that existed before. God's Word made them appear. God spoke, and it was done (Psalm 33: 9). The following verses insist that the Genesis narrative was real,
Colossians 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether [they be] thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:
Colossians 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him, all things consist.
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:2 The same was at the beginning with God.
John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.
Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
The following quotes show that throughout all her ministry, Ellen G. White was uncompromising in her rejection of the theory of Evolution. She wrote,
"It is the worst kind of infidelity; for with many who profess to believe the record of creation, it is infidelity in disguise."—The Signs of the Times, March 20, 1879.
"[S]hall we, for the privilege of tracing our descent from germs and mollusks and apes, consent to cast away that statement of Holy Writ, so grand in its simplicity, 'God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him'? Genesis 1:27."—Education, p. 130.
"When the Lord declares that He made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, He means the day of twenty-four hours, which He has marked off by the rising and setting of the sun."— (Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, p. 136).
You can see that to a believer, Creation should not be a theory, but a fact. Just as Creation is a fact, so is the Cross, since they are intimately related. God displays His love in both events. You cannot believe in one and reject the other. That would be foolish.
| RR |