MARVELOUS CREDULITY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA · Feb 14, 1906

MARVELOUS CREDULITY.

IN the midst of the theories and isms of this earth, he who would be sure of participating in the triumph of truth must not abandon the Word of God.

“Science” has been busy for many years in overthrowing the Bible. It is still busy; and it will have occasion to be busy till the end of time. Many religious teachers are accepting the evolution theory of Creation because they consider the plain Bible narrative of that great event as “contrary to the known laws of the evolution of nature,” and because “the truths of geology have supplanted,” the record of Genesis.

It is certain that there are few deductions more uncertain than the deductions of geologists in regard to the history of the earth and its internal conditions. Many a geologist who has attempted to give the age of the earth has reckoned it as some millions of years older or younger than the age given to it by other equally eminent geologists.

“Science” has taught us, and demonstrated to its own satisfaction, that the interior of the earth is a molten globe, surrounded by a cooling crust of solid matter. “Science” has taught us, and proved to its own satisfaction, that the interior of the earth is the solidest kind of a solid, with a coating of molten matter between the solid core and the outer crust.

Again, “science” rejects the scientific theory of a molten interior, because of the scientific demonstration that, if the interior of the earth were molten, the attraction of the sun and moon would create a tidal wave of the molten matter that would completely disintegrate the crust of the earth, even if it were made of solid steel. “Science” has also rejected the theory of the cushion of molten matter between the solid core and the solid crust for similar scientific reasons, and teaches now that the earth is solid from center to circumference. What the next scientific deduction in reference to the earth’s history and construction will be, neither we nor the scientists can tell.

“Science” has given various scientific reasons for earthquake and volcanic disturbances, and these have been abandoned one by one, because later science has “proved” the older demonstrations unscientific and unreliable, being overturned by later manifestations of the powers that produce these phenomena.

With many, the deductions of science are sufficient to prove the Biblical account of Creation wrong, because this “science” does not agree with the Bible. It hardly needs to be said that it is entirely to the honor of the Bible that such science does not agree with it. If it did, the Bible certainly would be overthrown, for “science” has continually overthrown “science,” and demonstrated the overthrow; and the process continues to-day. The Bible could not agree with such “science” and be the Word of God. It is strange, however, that so many choose to believe that each of these untenable scientific theories has overthrown the Bible; and the most unaccountable part of it all is that so many who have entered the sacred desk have forsaken the solid Word for the ever-shifting theories of science. “Science” has been able to arrive at few conclusions that it has not been able later to overthrow; and these few unassailable conclusions are in harmony with the teachings of that Book which is the fountain of true science.

The “known laws of the evolution of nature” are not so surely known now by the scientist as they were a few years ago. Some scientists are discarding the Darwinian theory of the creation of animal life. The “missing link” is still missing; but there are many missing links in the theory; for the Darwinian has not been able to weld up his chain from the protoplasm even to the monkey—not by many a phantom “link.” The scientist can not trace any single animal out of one species and into another, or trace the origin of one genus back into another genus. Each had its own beginning, and did not spring from a dissimilar order.

With this showing, it is asking us to exercise a credulity that the scientist would not tolerate for a moment toward the Bible, when we are asked by such scientists to accept such deductions and turn our backs upon the Word of God. The psalmist declares that “the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.” It is better to be simple enough to believe that sure testimony of Him who is “from everlasting to everlasting,” and therein possess the truest wisdom, the very key to the true science, than it is to accept the “wisdom” of this world, shifting, uncertain, anchorless, rudderless, and self-destructive, believing all our lives that which is not true, and refusing to our eternal ruin to believe the sure Word of Him in whom we live and move and have our being.

And yet to-day the whole tendency of popular religious teaching is away from the Word and toward the acceptance of these vacillating theories which contradict the Word. The colleges are full of them; the public schools are full of them; the popular pulpits are overflowing with them; and now it is earnestly proposed that the Sunday-schools shall take them up.

The baleful results of departure from the living Word are seen in a religion of cold formalism, a patterning after the worldliness of the unconverted, a dearth of vital godliness, a lessening number of heart conversions, and a general turning to the world. As a consequence, faith is disappearing, and the stirring words of God's last solemn warning to the world are generally falling on leaden ears. Perhaps the greatest menace to the soul to-day is found in this faith-destroying disease that is sweeping the popular churches like a very bosom of destruction, in deed and in truth an epidemic of death.

The Christian's hope and shield are in God and the Word which He has given. "Science" can not produce one single protoplasmic cell, to say nothing of a peopled world; neither can it save the souls of those who flee to it, flinging reproach upon the Word of Him who can do and has done all this and a myriad other things of which we have never dreamed. It is best to believe God; it is safe to believe Him; and there is no safety, no surety, no refuge in anything else. s.