Creation: a Key to
the Gospel
Dr Don Batten
B.Sc.Agr. (Hons I) PhD
In the beginning God
created the heavens and
the earth.
Genesis 1:1
Evolution: ‘no room for God’?
“In the evolutionary pattern of thought
there is no longer either need or room
for the supernatural. The earth was not
created: it evolved. So did all the animals
and plants that inhabit it, including our
human selves, mind and soul as well as
brain and body. So did religion.”
—Sir Julian Huxley, Director-General
of UNESCO, in Essays of a Humanist [1964],
Penguin Books, UK, 1969 reprint, pp.82–83).
Praise Darwin (evolution)!?
Saviour
Judge
Sin
Law
Creator
Blocks – Creator Saviour
We demolish arguments and every
pretension that sets itself up against the
knowledge of God, and we take captive
every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:5
Creation Ministries International
Genesis harmonisations
GAP
THEORY
Pain
Death
Killing
Disease
Thorns
Struggle
Suffering
Extinction
Millions
of
Years?
Everything was “very good”
God saw all that he had made,
and behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:31
“…it was
very good.”
Genesis 1:31
Garden of Eden
“…it was
very good.”
Genesis 1:31
Eden on bones
DEATH
SUFFERING
DISEASE
Genesis
1:5b
And
and
there
there
was
was
evening morning
one day
(literally; Hebrew yom echad)
Meanings of ‘day’ in English
In my father’s day,
he would go to bed early Sunday
evening and rise early in the morning
of the following day, and spend the
next six days travelling, during the
day, to cross the whole country.
Marcus Dods* on ‘day’
“If, for example, the word ‘day’ in these
chapters does not mean a period of
twenty-four hours, the interpretation
of scripture is hopeless.”
Marcus Dods (1834–1909), The Book of
Genesis, Armstrong, NY, p. 4, 1907.
*Scottish Prof. of New Testament Exegesis
and then Principal, New College, Edinburgh.
Order of creation:
Genesis vs big bang/evolution
SIX DAYS OF CREATION
DAY 1
DAY 2
DAY 3
DAY 4
DAY 5
DAY 6
Romans 1:20
For his invisible attributes, namely,
his eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly perceived, ever
since the creation of the world, in the
things that have been made. So they
are without excuse.
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. He was with God in the
beginning. Through him all things
were made; without him nothing was
made that has been made.
Jesus and age of universe
Jesus: “From the beginning of creation, God
made them male and female.” Mark 10:6
Time line of some 4,000 years before Christ
Adam
and Eve (Day 6)
The beginning
Time line for 14,000,000,000 years since ‘big bang’
The beginning
‘Adam and Eve’
Which leads to …
“If Jesus as a finite human being erred from
time to time, there is no reason at all to
suppose that Moses, Paul, John wrote
Scripture without error. Rather, we are wise to
assume that the biblical authors expressed
themselves as human beings writing from the
perspectives of their own finite, broken
horizons.”
Sparks, “After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the
Bible in a Postmodern Age”, BioLogos.org, 2010.
Adam to Abraham
chronology
The Bible tells us that
death and suffering were
not part of the original
created order and they will
not be part of the future
restored heavens and earth
Romans 8:21,22
… the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to decay… v. 21
For we know
that the
whole
creation
groans and
suffers
the pains of
childbirth
together
until now.
Romans 8:22
Evolutionary story
Death creation
Real history
For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15:22
“The First
Adam”
1 Cor. 15:45
“The Last
Adam”
1 Cor. 15:45
Can either man not be a real person?
Bad news … good news
Bad News
Sin
Man is lost. We need to
be saved from our sin.
Good News
Salvation
Christ provides
salvation from sin and death
Evolution and evangelism
“I am an evangelist. I go around
and talk with people—one-on-one
conversations. In my time on
college campuses and talking to
high schoolers, the number one
answer I get for there not being a
God, so then I don't have to
believe, is evolution.”
—Personal correspondence, Mark Cahill, evangelist
and author of One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven
Summarising …
Non-traditional views of Genesis (if
you think about the consequences):
1. Rob Christ of His glory as Creator
2. Undermine the goodness of God
3. Undermine the Gospel
4. Undermine hermeneutics
5. Undermine eschatology (end times)
6. Impede evangelism
Blocks – Creator Saviour
What changed England into a pagan nation?
“… I myself have little doubt that in England
it was geology and the theory of evolution
that changed us from a Christian to a pagan
nation.”
—F. Sherwood Taylor, Geology changes the
outlook, in Ideas and Beliefs of the
Victorians, Sylvan Press Ltd, London, p.
195, 1949. (one of a series of talks
broadcast on BBC radio).
(Curator, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford).
“Evolution: rival to Christianity”
“Naturalistic evolution is the
great intellectual rival to
Christianity in the Western
world. It is the creation myth
of the secular elites and their
intellectual weapon of choice
in public debate.”
albertmohler.com/2011/02/01/creation-vs-evolution-thenew-shape-of-the-debate/
Dr Albert
Mohler,
President,
Southern
Baptist
Theological
Seminary
What about theistic evolution?
“I believe that it [the theistic
evolution movement] represents a
very significant challenge to the
integrity of Christian theology and the
church’s understanding of everything Dr Albert Mohler,
President,
from the authority and truthfulness
Southern Baptist
of the Bible to the meaning of the
Theological
Gospel. … The theory of evolution is
Seminary,
no mere nuisance—it represents one Baptist Press News
of the greatest challenges to Christian
26 Jan 2011
faith and faithfulness in our times.”
www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=34514
An important distinction
• observable
• repeatable
• experiments
Science studies the repeatable.
History studies the unrepeatable.
Noah’s Ark
The Flood: key to
understanding history
(Genesis 6-8)
Noah’s Ark: real!
300 cubits (~143 m)
• Carrying capacity: 15,000 tonnes!
• Korean naval architects showed that
the shape would have been very stable
in huge seas.
Can you
see the
people?
Widespread fossilization—
sudden burial in mud
Global flood!
Dinosaur
and fish
fossilized
together
Large-scale sedimentary formations
Coconino
Sandstone
Kaibab
Upwarp
(Grand
Canyon,
eastern
Arizona)
Wipes out ~500 million years of evolutionary time!
Cross section of Grand
Canyon geology
showing monocline and
Kaibab Upwarp
Observations blow away 480 million
years of imaginary evolutionary time!
70 my
From Creation
magazine
Carbon dating: evidence against
‘millions of years’!
Almost every bit of fossil organic material
contains measurable carbon-14 (coal,
bone, etc.)—even diamonds supposedly
billions of years old!
But, anything older than 50,000 years
should have no measurable carbon-14!
“This is not
something I ever
dreamed I’d see.”
Blood vessels
Blood cells
“… flexible and
resilient and when
stretched returns
to its original
shape.”
Mary Schweitzer, Science 307(5717):1952, 25 March 2005.
+Nature News
Blue stars burn H up to
200,000 x faster than our
Sun
All spiral galaxies contain
some blue stars
Burn up H in < 1 million
years
Star formation? Not
observed. No viable
model.
Orion
Continents are eroding & washing into the sea.
Eroded sediment
Continent
Sea floor sediment
creation.com/eroding-ages
•Continents are eroding & washing into the
sea.
•The average rate of erosion: 60 mm / 1000
years.
•The basement rocks of continents said to be
~2.5 billion years old.
•Erosion would remove 150 kilometres of
continent in that time!
•Continents would be levelled in just 10 Ma.
creation.com/eroding-ages
creation.com/age
Blue Mountains (Australia)
Receding stage of floodwaters
Always be prepared to give an
answer to everyone who asks you to
give the reason for the hope that you
have.
I Peter 3:15