What comes to your mind when you travel the countryside and see the beauty of the earth? If you don’t see the world as an expression of creative power, you’re not living in praise of God: you’re denying God the worship which belongs to Him.
The Christian world has a division between those who are convinced that evolutionary scientists are the truth-tellers, and therefore that the world created itself, and on the other side those who choose to believe to varying degrees what their Bibles tell them, which is that God made the world and all that we see in the heavens.
The latter group is further divided. Many church-goers are of the opinion that when the Bible speaks of creation it really means something other than what it says. It may mean that many billions of years ago the Lord started things off with a big bang, and then watched from a distance while the universe by nature or lucky chance formed galaxies and finally a planet on which life slowly arose. After billions more years of fortuitous events, nature produced humans. Meanwhile God occasionally pokes his divine nose into the process in order to make sure things are going reasonably well.
To this group of believers in “creation” the evolutionary scientist is the expert, and the theologian who goes along with his theories, interpreting Scripture to say what it “really” means is the wise and intelligent one. For the believer in some form of God-directed evolution, the experts who teach this process and interpret Scripture accordingly are the priests of true religion, and all others are ignorant and deluded.
How can this view be anything but theft: stealing from God the glory He richly deserves? If Scripture doesn’t mean what it says in some places, who’s to tell what any of it means? Who can we trust to make those calls? How can God do anything right if He can’t protect the truth of what He calls His Word? How can He direct the eternal future if He wasn’t in control of the temporal past? How do we know we can be forgiven of our sins? Where is that assurance? Perhaps Jesus didn’t “really” die for us all. Perhaps we aren’t really in line for eternal life. Perhaps, after all, we’re going to rot in the ground and quickly be forgotten as the cosmos continues to evolve.
COUNT ME OUT
I don’t want to know a God who isn’t able to say what He means. I don’t want a God who is unable to tell the truth. When He says, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth”, I want to think that that’s exactly what it means, and that God means what He says. We’re lied to by politicians, by media, by educators and by people in our own families: why not the theologian? Surely a God who is able to live endlessly can tell the truth? If He can’t or won’t, we’re all in serious trouble: let’s eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Here’s a vital truth from Scripture, if you’re interested:
Let God be true, and every human being a liar (Romans 3:4).
I’m not saying that every scientist and educator who believes in evolution is intentionally lying. I’m saying that if God is not the ultimate expert by whom we must judge all others, there is no such thing as Truth; we are all dead in our sins, and this life, so far as we can tell, is all there is.
For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day (Exodus 20:11).
Moses told us that God made all things. Was Moses a liar? Was He mistaken? Was he misquoted? Is Scripture fabricated by fallible men? If this is your view, throw your Bible away, and start searching for some other truth: don’t profess to be something you aren’t.
THE CONSISTENT MESSAGE OF SCRIPTURE
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible (Colossians 1:15-16).
The New Testament continues the message of the old, and not only are we told that God created all things, but that all things were created through the Son of God-Jesus Christ.
Therefore, if we have any integrity within ourselves as professing Christians, we will believe what our Bible tells us. And more than that, we will give our God, and our Saviour, the praise which is owed to Him. Anything less than this is denying God what He deserves and what He asks of us. It is in fact theft of the glory due to His holy name, because He indeed is the designer and creator of all things:
“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).
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 