Some Bad Marriages

Some Bad Marriages I. Scripture warns against and sometimes forbids the joining together of certain things. A. 2CO 6:14-17 lists a number of things which are to be kept separate. B. Flesh and spirit are contrary. We cannot be led by both nor blend them. GAL 5:16-17. C. Evil and good are contrary. We cannot do evil that good may come. ROM 3:8. D. God and mammon are contrary. We cannot be the servant of both. MAT 6:24. E. Love and hate are contrary. They are not varying degrees of a uni-emotion. ROM 9:13. F. Truth and error are contrary. We cannot erase the distinction between them. 1JO 4:6. II. It has become fashionable in Christianity to wed together the general theory of evolution with the record of divine creation and the fall of man into sin (GEN 1-3). This wedding: A. presumes to admit long geologic ages into the creation account, which takes away the basis for the seven-day week. EXO 20:9-11. B. substitutes gradual uniform processes for catastrophic change to explain geology. 2PE 3:4-6. C. presumes to disconnect death from Adam. ct/w ROM 5:12. D. presumes to declare that chaos and death are what God calls good. GEN 1:31. E. ruins the theological continuity of the First Adam / Last Adam construct. ROM 5:14. F. casts aspersions on Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and the apostles who all held that the Genesis record of beginnings is historically accurate as written. MAR 10:6-7; 2CO 11:3. G. does not enhance the Christian message and integrity of Scripture; it undermines it. III. There are basically four accommodationist theories which have been advanced in order to wed Scripture to the geologic record (so-called). They are: Theistic Evolution, the Day-Age Theory, the Gap Theory, and the Progressive Creation Theory. A. Theistic evolution (T.E.) is a general term which includes varied theories of wedding evolutionary science to Scripture. 1. T.E. generally holds to a long age of the earth. But Scripture demonstrates that the earth is of recent creation. 2. T.E. maintains that God used evolutionary processes to create. a. Evolution supposes that one kind becomes another kind. But God said that things would bring forth “after their/his kind” in GEN 1. b. Evolution requires viciousness, waste, suffering and death. If this was the process which God used to create, how could God look upon this and pronounce it “very good” (GEN 1:31)? ct/w ISA 5:20-21. 3. T.E. generally accepts the sequence of events as outlined by the evolutionists' so- called geologic record. But the sequence of evolutionary development is totally irreconcilable to the Biblical record. Consider: The Biblical Record Evolution's Order Matter created by God Matter has always existed Earth created before sun & stars Sun & stars existed before earth Ocean formed before land Land existed before the ocean Light before the sun Sun was earth's first light Land plants earth's first life Marine organisms earth's first life Plants created before sun Sun existed long before plants Fruit trees created before fish Fish existed long before fruit trees Birds created before insects Insects existed long before birds Some Bad Marriages Page 1 of 5  Birds created before reptiles Reptiles existed before birds Man lived before there was rain Rain fell before man existed Man created before woman A female Homo sapiens was first Man uniquely formed in perfection Man descended from ape Man made in God's image Man just another animal Creation is finished Evolutionary “creation” ongoing 4. T.E. has sometimes theorized that where God says that He made man from the dust of the ground (GEN 2:7), this is a perfect summary of evolution: inorganic materials eventually evolved into intelligent life. But, if dust-to-man means evolution, what does rib-to-Eve mean? GEN 2:21-22. 5. If God created over millions of years involving death, the existing earth is not ruined by sin, but is as it has always been---as God supposedly intended it to be. So why then should God destroy it and create a new heavens and earth? 2PE 3:10-13. B. The Day-Age theory (D.A.) basically maintains that the days of creation in Genesis are actually great periods of time, allowing for uniformitarian geology and macro-evolution. 1. Some D.A.s have gone to 2PE 3:8 to try to justify the idea of millions of years of earth history. a. Even if this taken as a divine equation, it still does not say that a day is a million years, only AS a thousand! b. The verse also says that a thousand years is AS one day, which cancels out the first equation. c. 2PE 3:8 is simply emphasizing that time is nothing to an eternal, timeless God. Compare “is as” in DEU 13:6, etc. 2. If each of the days of creation was actually a great age, perhaps millions of years, how does one account for the fact that an abundance of plant life, including fruit- bearing trees, were created on Day Three, but would have survived for millions of years until the sun was created on Day Four? 3. If the “days” of GEN 1 actually mean great ages of time, this creates real problems when we come to EXO 20:11. 4. Adam was created on Day Six, and still alive on Day Seven and lived for 930 years after that (GEN 5:3-5). If Day Six was actually an indeterminate eon, this makes a mockery of Scripture and common-sense. C. The Gap Theory (also called the Ruin-Reconstruction Theory) maintains that there is a gap of great age, perhaps millions of years between GEN 1:1 and GEN 1:2. 1. This theory was popularized in the footnotes of the Scofield Reference Bible of 1909. Dr. Scofield liked sticking gaps of time in Scripture where there are none. 2. Gap theorists basically hold to: a. belief in a literal view of Genesis (but with a mystery gap in GEN 1:1-2). b. belief in an extremely long, but undefined age for the earth. c. an obligation to fit the origin of most of the geologic strata and other geologic evidence in their “gap.” d. an opposition to the general theory of evolution. 3. Gap Theory teaches that: a. in the far-distant past, God created a perfect heaven and earth over which Satan ruled. b. the earth was populated by the “prehistoric” creatures of the geologic record and a race of soulless “pre-Adamite” men. c. Satan sinned and fell, bringing sin, chaos and death into the physical Some Bad Marriages Page 2 of 5  universe, provoking a judgmental flood and upheaval upon earth indicated by the waters of GEN 1:2. d. all fossils upon the earth date from this “Lucifer's Flood.” e. after “Lucifer's Flood,” God sometime later started the six days of creation which proceed from GEN 1:3. f. since God told Adam to replenish the earth in GEN 1:28, the earth had been earlier plenished. But plenish means: “To fill up... to replenish.” g. the death that came from Adam was only spiritual death. 5. The whole theory is precluded by the fact that all the creation, including the heavens and the earth, was formed in the six-day period that the Gap Theory says followed the first creation and judgment. EXO 20:8-11. 6. The Gap Theory supposes that God was looking upon the death and fossilized ruins of the first creation and calling it “very good” in GEN 1:31. 7. Gap Theory also concludes that death and corruption preceded the entrance of sin into this world by Adam. But Scripture makes clear that death (spiritual AND physical) came as a result of Adam's sin. Adam's sin was what brought death to ALL of the physical creation. ROM 5:12; ROM 8:19-22. 8. By advocating death and bloodshed before Adam's sin, the whole gospel message is undermined. Bloodshed only happened AFTER Adam sinned. GEN 3:21. 9. Scripture nowhere says that anyone but Adam was given dominion over the earth. 10. Adam was not just the first man with a soul, he was the FIRST MAN. 1CO 15:45. 11. The Gap theorist must read GEN 1:2 “...the earth BECAME void...” instead of “...the earth WAS...void.” 12. The idea of fossils being formed from a world-wide Luciferian flood and upheaval (of which the Bible is silent) relegates the flood of Noah (of which the Bible speaks volumes) to a downgraded “also-ran” judgment by water. 13. The idea that “...replenish the earth” (GEN 1:28) means to refill the earth is simply wrong. a. replenish: To make full of, to fill, to stock or store abundantly with persons or animals. b. The same Hebrew word translated “replenish” in GEN 1:28 is translated “fill” in GEN 1:22. D. The Progressive Creation Theory is “the hypothesis that God has increased the complexity of life on earth by successive creations of new life forms over billions of years while miraculously changing the earth to accommodate the new life.” (Dinosaurs and Hominids, audiotape [Pasadena, CA: Reasons to Believe, 1990]) 1. Progressive Creationism (P.C.) asserts that: a. the earth and universe are billions of years old. b. the days of creation were overlapping periods of millions and billions of years. c. God stepped in many times at punctuated intervals to create replacements or improved models of creatures. d. death and bloodshed have existed from the beginning of the creation and were not the result of Adam's sin. e. Adam's sin brought only spiritual death. Adam was created after the vast majority of earth's history of life and death had already taken place. f. the flood of Noah was not global, only local. g. nature is the 67th book of the Bible so we interpret Scripture by “science.” 2. The idea of “million-year” days was refuted earlier. Some Bad Marriages Page 3 of 5  3. There was also no bloodshed, death and destruction before Adam. 4. However, a P.C. argues that plants would have had to die under the traditional understanding of GEN 1, since men and animals were to eat plants (GEN 1:29-30). And, the plants allegedly would have experienced bleeding and bruising. a. Plants would not necessarily have to die when eaten. Look in a cow pasture. b. Plants do not suffer and bleed like animals do. c. If there is no distinction between plants and animals, if both equally suffer, bleed and die in God's eyes, then why didn't God accept Adam's fig leaves to cover his nakedness? GEN 3:21. d. Likewise, why didn't God accept Cain's sacrifice of the fruit of the ground if the death of a plant equates with the death of a flesh and blood animal? GEN 4:3-4. e. If the death of plants equates with the death of animals, why did God only design to preserve that “...wherein is the breath of life...” (GEN 6:17; 7:21- 23), that is, animals? 5. If the flood of Noah was just a local event, then: a. why, with 120 years to relocate, did God tell Noah to build an ark for the preservation of humans and air-breathing animals? b. If the flood of Noah were only local, what then becomes of God's promise to never again flood the earth as He had just done (GEN 8:21; 9:11, 15), when sizeable local floods have continued throughout history? c. If Noah and his family weren't the only ones who survived the flood, would the terms of the Noahic covenant apply to the rest or not (GEN 9:1-6)? Would they be exempted from requiring capital punishment or from the restriction on eating blooded meat? d. If the flood of Noah was only local, then what of the parallel that Peter draws from it to the final judgment (2PE 3:3-12)? Will most of the earth and its inhabitants be spared? 6. Nature is not a 67th book of the Bible. Looking to nature for ultimate truth leads to idolatry and immorality. ROM 1:21-23. IV. Jesus Christ is the pinnacle of God’s creation. The first Adam had immortality and the power to lose it. The second Adam (Christ) has immortality and the power to give it. 1CO 15:45. V. We should not only avoid rending asunder what God has joined together (MAT 19:6) but also avoid wedding together what God has declared should be kept separate and which logically must be kept separate. Some Bad Marriages Page 4 of 5  Supplement Consider the words of a leading 19th C. antiChrist humanist, Thomas Huxley. 1. In his essay 'Lights of the Church and Science', Huxley states, “I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of the passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the ‘ten words’ were not written by God's hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the Story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the Creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome — what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated: And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Science and Hebrew Tradition, D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1897, p.207) 2. Huxley denied the Genesis record but saw how inconsistent it was of Christians to harmonize evolutionary ideas with it: “I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately among ‘types’ and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as a matter of fact, that ‘the Flood came and destroyed them all’, did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah's wife, and his sons' wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage: and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God's methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of ‘Wolf’ when there is no wolf?” (Ibid, p. 232) 3. Huxley then gives us a lesson on New Testament theology. He quotes MAT 19:4-5, and then comments: “If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a ‘type’ or ‘allegory,’ what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (Ibid, p. 235-236) 4. To substantiate this, Huxley quotes 1CO 15:21-22: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Huxley continues, “If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive ‘type,’ comparable to the profound Promethean mythos, what value has Paul's dialectic?” 5. Huxley understood what many Christians refuse to concede: one must either accept the Genesis record as literal and historical or trash the Genesis record by accepting evolutionary theory and long geologic ages: the two positions are irreconcilable. One cannot believe Jesus if one does not believe what Moses wrote. JOH 5:46-47. Some Bad Marriages Page 5 of 5