Your ShelfYour Projects

Creation vs. Evolution

2%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 1, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 26.

Read the full edition

Creation vs. Evolution

The first verse of the first chapter of the Bible reads thus: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The last verse of the last chapter of the last book, barring the benediction, reads thus: “He who testifieth these things, saith, Yea; I come quickly.” “Come, Lord Jesus.”
The first verse of the Bible introduces us to God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The last verse of the Bible leaves us facing the personal second coming of Jesus Christ, and with the prayer that he should come.
These two ideas, these two revelations, span all the way from the beginning to the ending of the gospel, because the first chapter of Genesis is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the closing verse, the second advent of our Lord, is the consummation of the gospel. Neither is complete without the other. The original creation involved the new creation. The power of God in the original creation was the power in the new creation. The old heavens and the old earth pass away, but we, “according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
If any attack is to be made effectively upon the gospel of Jesus Christ, it must be made upon the foundation. And the foundation is creation,—God as the Creator. There can be no adequate conception of God except it be as a personal being, who brought into existence the things that are, who existed before these things, who was not dependent upon things that are; for “by faith we understand that the worlds were framed, not out of things that do appear.” Therefore, when we have come to the last generation, the generation that was to hear the message of the second advent of our Lord, the final attack has been made upon the gospel of Christ by beginning with the first chapter of Genesis. This attack upon the first chapter of Genesis began in an apparently innocent way, by simply claiming that investigation had shown that the days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis, instead of being days of twenty-four hours' time, were long, indefinite periods. That attack, which began in that apparently simple way, involved everything that has been developed since, down to the denial of the second personal advent of Christ. He who shaped that attack from the beginning, the enemy of truth, had in mind, without doubt, to defeat the message of the second personal advent of Christ, and the preparation for that event.
A people have arisen during this generation who are called Seventh-day Adventists. This people, by the very name which they have taken, in their teaching, in the platform upon which they stand, are a living protest against these perversions of Scripture, either through an infidel science or through a denial direct, or a misinterpretation of Scripture.
It would be impossible in one brief hour to show to what extent this movement and this people are a living protest against all this perversion. I shall emphasize two things that stand out in the very name Seventh-day Adventists: (1) keepers of the seventh day; (2) believers in the near advent of our Lord.
First, the Sabbath day. A great deal more is in it than the mere question of choice between two periods of time, each of equal length: a great deal more is in it than the questions, “Shall we stop work, and attend public service on the seventh day of the week?” or, “Shall we stop work, and attend public service on the first day of the week?” In this question of the Sabbath of our Lord is involved this whole question of apostasy. No true observer of the seventh day should ever apostatize from the truth of the gospel, because the very observance of the seventh day is his testimony to his belief in the original gospel, as revealed in the Scripture. Notice, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
No one can truly believe this commandment without believing in a personal God, the Creator. That which distinguishes between the true God and false gods is the fact that he is the Creator. We worship him because he is the Creator. He is worthy of our worship. We may worship him, and not be abased thereby. We may worship him, and be lifted up thereby, because he is the Creator. Read his own invitation: “O come, let us sing unto Jehovah: let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and let us make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. For Jehovah is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the height of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship, and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.” “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” “All the gods of the nations are idols; but the Lord made the heavens.” The gods of the other nations were falsehoods; they were lies. But God is not so. He is the former, the maker, of all things.
Now see how this foundation has been struck at, and, with many, absolutely overthrown, until, in place of a personalGod,—a God who has a dwelling-place in the heavens, a place where he may be found in a sense in which he is not found elsewhere, a God everywhere present by his Spirit, and yet a personal being,—see how this whole idea has been perverted and cast aside.
In the old times the out-and-out pagans made visible gods, and fell down and worshiped them, and they had gods many and lords many. In these modern days, men have not made in this country visible gods, they have not fallen down to images of wood and of stone; but they have made false gods just the same. For that God who is designated as an infinite power merely, that God who is simply designated as an impersonal essence, is just as much a false god as was Jupiter of the Romans, or Zeus of the Greeks, or Ra of the Egyptians. It makes no difference whether man's idea of God takes a visible form, before which he bows, or whether his idea of God is kept in invisible form (in his mind), he worships a false god just the same. When that god is the god of his own imagination, his own imagining, or image-making, it is a false god just the same.
Now what is the basis of the attack, and how is it presented? It is presented on the basis that creation was not a special act, but a development; that according to certain laws, beginning with the fire-mist, and ending with man, there has been, through untold ages, a development, step by step,—a development from within, rather than a special creation by a God from without. Originally, this idea was confined merely to the material creation; but here is what it covers now, as set forth by one who has given it some study, and endeavors to refute it. He says:—
Every scientist understands, as do also intelligent teachers of the Scriptures, that the theory of evolution is not simply a question of the origin of species, but, in its present-day application, proposes to account for everything material, from fire-mist to the perfected frame of the universe; everything animated, from the sterilized cell of lowest life, to the Man of Nazareth; and everything moral, from the sensations of the ameba, to the sacred communion between God and man.
There is not an idea in the whole range that evolution has not laid its hand upon, to change it, and to pervert it.
At first it was thought, “Ah, we can accommodate the Bible to these things; we can grant that those days in Genesis were simply periods; that does not really affect the Bible or the gospel.” So that was granted by many professed believers in, and teachers of, the Scripture; but when they granted that claim, they granted the whole question; they granted a principle which, when developed, set aside the whole plan and revelation of
the gospel; and in place of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and salvation through his atoning work, it established a principle which, when developed, made man, as it were, his own creator and his own savior, and has ended in dispensing with the revelation of the Scripture, in putting reason in the place of revelation, in putting self-salvation in the place of salvation by grace through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now see how this has worked. Here is another statement by one who believes in evolution:—
It has been difficult to reconcile geology with the first chapter of Genesis, but not impossible. By making the Mosaic “day” an epoch of undefined duration, and by tracing what really is a remarkable, though not a scientifically exact parallel between the order of creation in Genesis and the order in geology, the theologian was able to make geology confirm Genesis. But it was impossible to reconcile Darwinism with the third chapter of Genesis. The “Origin of Species,” and Milton's “Paradise Lost,” can not be harmonized; and “Paradise Lost” is a great poet's interpretation of the philosophy of life once universally accepted in the church. That philosophy may be epitomized in a sentence thus: Man was created perfect; he fell; in his fall he involved all his descendants in ruin; to recover man from that ruin and restore him to the primitive state of innocence, Jesus Christ has come into the world. Darwinism denied that there was any historic fall, and by necessary implication denied that there was or could be any process of recovery from a fall, and restoration to a lost state of innocence. For the fall and redemption of man, Darwin substituted the gradual development of man.—The Outlook, Feb. 20, 1909, page 378.
Sometimes we can get a view of such a thing as this by looking at it a little from the ridiculous side. Here is a new translation of the first chapter of Genesis, or certain portions of it, adapted to modern science and modern conclusions:—
1. Primarily the Unknowable moved upon cosmos and evolved protoplasm.
2. And protoplasm was inorganic and undifferentiated; containing all things in potential energy; and a spirit of evolution moved upon the fluid mass.
3. And the Unknowable said, Let the atoms attract, and their contact beget light, heat, and electricity.
4. And the Unconditional differentiated the atoms each after its kind; and their combination begat rock, air, and water.
5. And there went out a spirit of evolution from the Unconditioned, and working in protoplasm by accretion and absorption produced the organic cell.
6. And cell by nutrition evolved primordial germ, and germ developed protogene; and protogene begat eozon, and eozon begat monad, and monad begat animalcule.
7. And animalcule ephemera: then began creeping things to multiply on the face of the earth.
8. And earthly atom in vegetable protoplasm begat molecule, and thence came grass and every herb of the earth.
9. And animalculæ in the water evolved fins, tails, claws, and scales; and in the air wings, beaks; and on the land they sprouted such organs as were necessary, as played upon the environments.
10. And by attrition and absorption, came the radiata and mollusca, and mollusca begat articulata, and articulata begat vertebrate.
11. Now these are the generations of the higher vertebrata in the cosmic period that the Unknowable evolved the bipedal mammalia.
12. And every man of the earth, while he was yet a monkey, and the horse, while he was yet the hipparion, and the hipparion before he was an orebon.
13. Out of the ascidian came the amphibian, and begat the pentadactyle, and by inheritance and selection, produced the hylobate, from which are the simiade in all their tribes.
14. And out of the simiade the lemur prevailed above his fellow and produced the platyrhine monkey.
15. And the platyrhine begat the catarrhine monkey, and he begat the anthropoid ape, and the ape begat the longimanous orang, and the orang begat the chimpanzee, and the chimpanzee evolved the what-is-it?
16. And the what-is-it went into the land of Nod, and took him a wife of the longimanous gibbons.
17. And in the process of the cosmic period were born unto them their children, and the anthropomorphic primordial types.
18. The homunculus, the prognathus; the troglodyte, and the autochthon, the terragon,—these are the generations of primeval man.
19. And primeval man was naked and not ashamed, but lived in quadrumanous innocence, and struggled mightily to harmonize with the environment.
20. And by inheritance and natural selection did he progress from the stable and homogeneous, to the complex and the heterogeneous; for the weakest died, and the strongest grew and multiplied.
21. And man grew a thumb, for that he had need of, and developed capacities for prey.
22. For, behold, the swiftest men caught the most animals, and the swiftest animals got away from the most men; wherefore the slow animals were eaten, and the slow men starved to death.
23. And as the types were differentiated, the weaker types continually disappeared.
24. And the earth was filled with violence; for man strove with man, and tribe with tribe, whereby they killed off the weak and foolish and secured the survival of the fittest.—The Bible Student and Teacher, for July, 1908, pages 39 and 40.
Now that, in ridiculous form, is simply the science of evolution. We are asked to accept unproved theories, unprovable theories, which deny the inspiration of the Scriptures, which set aside the gospel of creation, which remove the very foundations from under our feet. We are asked to accept those on the authority of men, on the authority of reason, on the authority of imagination in place of the living Word of God. Now there isno reconciliation between evolution and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the man who attempts to harmonize the two is doing that impossible feat of riding two horses going in opposite directions. But those who have attempted it in the past have either given up the one or the other, or have been left in the dust of the arena.
Now let us see what further is involved in this. We say, What difference does it make about protoplasm and all that? The difference is in just this one vital principle, and that is the question of special creation by the power of the Word of God. Now look (Gen. 1:1), “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” and again (John 1:1), “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.” Now it is true that God, through the living Word, the Word his Son, the Word spoken, created all things; for “by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” “He spake, and it was; he commanded, and it stood fast.” This teaching is the very foundation of the gospel of salvation, and that is here; it is the first chapter in the Bible. Now see how it extends. Because God created the heavens and the earth through Jesus Christ, therefore we are invited to put our trust in him, because he promises to recreate us through the same power and the same living Word. Let us read it, as expressed in the Scripture, the first chapter of the epistle to the Colossians: “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: 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: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the church.” The head of creation is the head of the church. When you take away the headship of Christ in the creation, you take away the headship of Christ in the church; and when you take away Christ as the head of the church, what is a headless church but a dead church?—a form of a body without a living head, weak, powerless, inefficient. That is what the professed church is without Christ as the living head.
Now note it says here, “In him all things consist.” That is to say, things in themselves, apart from him, can not endure. “In him all things consist.” But what does science say in this generation? “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” What need of God, what need of his Son, Jesus Christ? What need of any second advent, since all things continue? The Scripture says, “In him all things consist.” The scientist says, “All things,” not mentioning him, “all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” Ah, but he says, this they wilfully forget, because it is revealed in the Scripture that all things have not continued as they were from the beginning of creation. What an effort has been put forth to discredit the flood! What volumes have been written to prove such a thing ridiculous, impossible, contrary to science, contrary to all the laws of evolution, that there should come upon the earth such a catastrophe as is spoken of in the Scripture! This they wilfully forget, because it is revealed in the Scripture. Things have not continued as they were. There has been a catastrophe; the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. That same God presides over the world to-day. Another catastrophe is pending. The heavens and the earth are “reserved unto fire.”
But now what has this to do with the protest of Seventh-day Adventists, so far as it relates to the question of the Sabbath? When God had given the Sabbath, the seventh day, he made it a sign. We read of this in various scriptures. I read one from Eze. 20:20: “And hallow my Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God.”
The Sabbath was made a sign immediately after it was pronounced from Sinai to the people. It was a sign to them that they were delivered out of Egypt. Why?—Because, first and foremost, it was a sign of God's creative power. And in bringing these people out from the land of Egypt, it was by a great manifestation, the repeated manifestation of creative power, that they were delivered. Therefore, the Lord took that which had previously been a sign of his creative power in creating the heavens and the earth, and made it to them a sign of that power which delivered them from the bondage of Egypt. Yes, and further, their experience was simply a typical experience. Egypt was the land of sin and darkness, and the deliverance of his people out of the land of Egypt is the type of the deliverance of every Christian from this land of darkness and sin.
The Sabbath, which was a sign of the original creation, which became to Israel a sign of the literal deliverance from the literal land of Egypt, has become to every true Israelite a sign of that same creative power which delivers him, through Jesus Christ, out of sin. In the beginning God created man in his image, and man lost that image. When David had committed that great sin, he prayed, but he did not pray to an unknown force. He said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
Man can do great things. This generation is an evidence of that. The wonders of this generation, the conquests that man has made upon the earth, in the air, and in the water, are wonderful; but man has never learned to change his own heart, he has never learned to create within him a right spirit. So in the Gospels we read concerning this work of creation that we are created in “Christ Jesus unto good works;” and in “Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. And what is the sign of the new creation?—It is that same Sabbath that is the sign of God's creative power, revealed through Jesus Christ. And in this generation, when science has made this attack on the Scripture, to set aside the whole idea of special creation, the whole idea of a personal God, there has arisen, under God's providence, a mighty voice protesting against it. That voice is being heard from the East to the West, from the North to the South, in the islands of the sea, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, a mighty protest against this perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ; and wherever there is an observer of the seventh-day Sabbath, there is a living protest against infidel unbelief. May these voices multiply in every land.
(Concluded next week)