The Missing Link and Cavemen Did humans really evolve from ape-like creatures? Theory or Fact? Mark 10:6, 2 Cor 10:4-5, Gen 1:26-28, 2:18-20, 3:20 Eater offering! So far the Easter offering has totaled $60,000!!! Now we have given $1.3 million towards missions and helping the poor! Haiti $26,200 = 146 children fed 1 year Vietnam Wheel chairs $17,200= 344 chairs Brazil Water filters $16,600= 84 filters Total chairs since 2010 = 5,228 + 344 chairs given away = 5,572 Total clean water filters given away since 2017 = 164 Total children fed since 2018 = 142 Introduction A. Today I would like to talk about creationism and evolution. Did humans really evolve from apelike creatures? Is evolution a fact or a theory? Does the fossil record really support evolution or creation? I am not a scientist I am a pastor. But I feel that as an open-minded individual I should be allowed to challenge things that are taught, after all, that is what education is supposed to be about. The fact that our modern educational system won t allow the teaching of creation alongside the teaching of evolution is complete hypocrisy and shows the weakness of the foolish belief of evolution. We have made a lot of great material available to you in the foyer. I encourage you to pick something up. Maybe even get a subscription to the Answers magazine. There is a lot of great science that supports creation. B. Television documentaries on human evolution abound. It seems like there is a new one almost every year on the Discovery Channel. All of these shows present as FACT the story of human evolution from apelike creatures over the past several million years. They claim that anthropologists have found links in the human evolutionary chain and that scientists have PROVEN evolution to be a fact. C. Yet the fossil record that is used to support human evolution has become more and more questionable as more and more fossils are found. Many of the fossils of human ancestors consist of little more than fragments of bone, many of which have been exposed as frauds. D. So what is the real evidence for human evolution? Today I would like to examine how anthropologists are using their own imagination rather than science to show that man has evolved from apes. And once again, we will see that the evidence points to the fact that man is a unique creation, made in the image of God. Four reasons why I believe that creation must be true Mark 10:6 or 2 Cor 10:4-5? Why am I teaching about this? A. Over the years I have been in many discussions especially with pastors about the teaching of creationism. Usually, I get this response, Oh Dave what is the big deal, as long as we all believe in Jesus we shouldn t worry about the small stuff! Is it really that important that we believe in creation? Let me give you at least four reasons why this is so important.
1 st Jesus believed in the story of creation. In Mark 10:6 we find Jesus making reference to the story of creation as He taught about marriage between a man and a woman. He declared that marriage is to be between a man and a woman because from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. Evolutionary ideas about the rise of man from apes have caused all sorts of confusion today. The confusion over marriage between man and woman today can be traced to the teaching of evolution. Humans were specially created by God and are not simply highly evolved primates. It is clear that Jesus believed in the creation story and He used it as a basis for His teaching for marriage. If we reject creation we make Jesus a false teacher. Some may think that Jesus just did not know about evolution, but the Bible says, Jesus was the one who made it all. In the John 1:3, and 1:10, Colossians 1:16, and Book of Hebrews 1:2 we are told Jesus is the one who created all things! 2 nd The creation story gives us the entire foundation the Christian faith and for the salvation of man. If there was death, disease, suffering, and destruction before man sinned then the whole concept of sin and its curse is now without any basis and the need for salvation is no longer necessary. According to the creation story, everything was created good, without death, disease, suffering, and destruction. It was not until Adam and Eve sinned that these things came upon the earth. Jesus came to pay the price for this sin by His sacrifice on the cross. His death and resurrection have broken the curse of sin and have brought the gospel or the spreading of God s kingdom on this earth. Without the creation story as we read it in Genesis we have no plan of salvation. Our only hope is that someday man will evolve and be good. But with six thousand years of history filled with wars and corruption, we don t have much hope. 3 rd If we can reject the plain teaching of Genesis, why can t we reject the plain teaching of other scriptures? This is all about foundations. We are in a war of ideas that are contrary to God s Word. This puts in question the divine inspiration of God s Word. Either it is from God or it is from men. If you can dismiss this part of the Bible, then the entire Bible is built on a weak foundation. A building on a weak foundation is sure to collapse at some time, which is what is happening in many churches today. They have destroyed the foundation of the Bible. If the creation story is not true, what about the genealogies that list every name all the way back to Adam? How can we have millions of years with these genealogies? We can t. Either the genealogies are correct or they are also wrong. Either the Bible can be trusted or it cannot. 4 th If we reject Bible teaching just because it is hard to believe or science says it is impossible, then why not reject Jesus virgin birth and His resurrection from the dead, or His miracles? Just because creation is hard to believe and some scientists are saying it couldn t have happened this way we cannot reject this. Ultimately we must come to grips with the fact that God s Word often tells us things that only faith can accept, even before science is able to support it. We can do our best to prove these things out by scientific research and historical research but ultimately we have to choose who we will believe, the Word of God or the word of men. B. The belief in the teaching of creation is not really optional. Evolutionary teaching has
far-reaching effects. It is not simply something that Christians can take or leave. Evolutionary ideas have fueled racist attitudes and set the stage for such atrocities as the Holocaust. Evolutionary ideas are totally contrary to God s teaching that man was created in God s image. <VIDEO> (ICR.org thatsafact) The Cambrian rock layer A. Many people believe that science has proven the earth to be billions of years old and that every living thing descended by the evolutionary process from a single cell, which was the result of a chance combination of chemicals. This is just not true and it is bad science. B. The fossil record does NOT show the gradual evolution of one life form into another as predicted and demanded by the theory of evolution. Microevolution within a species, yes, but the evolution from species to another NO. The missing links are called that because they are truly ALL missing, none has ever been found! There are HUGE gaps in the fossil record at ALL the major breaks: fish to amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to birds, and reptiles to mammals. With the hundreds of thousands of fossils that have been uncovered and put into museums, you would think we would have at least a few missing links! Yet we have NONE. The fossil record, our only documentation of whether evolution actually occurred in the past, lacks any transitional forms. Quite the contrary, instead of transitional forms and missing links what the fossil record does show is that all types appear fully-formed when first present. C. Some other major problems with evolution besides the lack of a supporting fossil record: 1. The total lack of any adequate explanation for the origin of life from dead chemicals. Even the simplest life form is tremendously complex. 2. The whole idea of chaos producing complexity defies all of science! 3. The whole idea of something from nothing, especially something incredibly complex is completely foreign to all of science, D. Yet the idea of life springing from an electrical charge that came from nowhere is still taught as science! E. It is not the findings of science that seem to contradict traditional interpretations of Genesis 1-11. Science has not found anything that contradicts the straightforward, literal understanding of Genesis. F. Rather, evolutionary scientists using assumptions and imagination have interpreted some of the observations of the natural world (while ignoring other observations) to invent a story about the past. It is not a conflict between the findings of science and traditional interpretations of the Bible. It is rather the conflict between the atheistic interpretations of God s creation by people who are suppressing the truth versus the sound interpretation of God s Word. What does the Bible say about the origin of man? Gen 1:26-28, 2:18-20, 3:20, I Cor 15:39 A. What does the Biblical say about the origin of man? God tells us that on the same day He made all animals that walk on the earth (the sixth day), He created man separately in His own image with the intent that man would have dominion over
every other living thing on Earth. From this, it is clear that there is no animal that is man s equal, and certainly none his ancestor. B. Thus when God paraded the animals by Adam for him to name, He observed that for Adam, there was not found a help meet for him. This leaves no room for prehumans or for billions of years of cosmic evolution prior to man s appearance on the earth. Adam chose the very name Eve for his wife because he recognized that she would be the mother of all living. C. The Apostle Paul stated clearly that man is not an animal: All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds (1 Corinthians 15:39). What about all the ape-man fossils? Or should we say ape man hoaxes! A. You have probably seen the famous posters of monkeys progressively turning into an upright human figure. But what evidence is there for this popular poster? Despite its widespread use, it is not based on factual evidence, but on imagination. Many may believe that there is a wide array of fossil evidence that clearly shows how apes have become humans. The pictures of a hunched monkey gradually developing into an upright walking human have been viewed by almost everyone. The problem is that much of the visuals are made up and are NOT backed by science at all! B. Biological similarities between humans and apes are a manifestation of common design, not common descent! The whole idea of man descending from apes has come to us from the idea that since humans are similar to apes we must have come from them. The fossil record is supposed to prove this. Well, let s take a close look at this fossil record. C. LUCY: Many fossils of ape-men are merely apes that evolutionists have made adjustments to fill the gap between apes and men. They are also the result of the evolutionists filling in the gaps of what was not found. In the case of Lucy, only 40% of the skeleton was found. Some of what was missing was the hands and feet. The life-like mannequins of Lucy in many museums show a hairy human-like female body WITH HUMAN HANDS AND FEET but with an obviously apelike head. The three-foot-tall Lucy stands erect in a deep thinking pose. Few visitors are aware that this is a gross misrepresentation of what is known about the actual fossil of this ape. These apes are known to be long-armed knuckle-walkers. Both the hands and feet of this creature are clearly apelike. Any paleontologists that have had the opportunity to study this fossil ape have reported that the hands and feet of this species are similar to those found in the chimpanzee. She did NOT HAVE human hands and feet. Yet evolutionists and museums continue to portray Lucy with virtually human feet and hands. Lucy is no different than today s chimpanzee. Lucy was not on the way to becoming human D. HEIDELBERG MAN: Then there was the Heidelberg man which was eventually declared to be nothing less than a fully developed human fossil. E. NEBRASKA MAN: In the early 1920s, a SINGLE fossil tooth was found and the next thing you know the ape-man was pictured in the London Illustrated News complete with the tooth s wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! Experts used this tooth, known as Nebraska man, as proof for human evolution during the Scopes trial. Yet a few years later parts of the skeleton were discovered together with the teeth, and
Nebraska man was found to really be a wild pig. F. PILTDOWN MAN: Then there was the famous Piltdown man. In 1912, an amateur paleontologist discovered a lower jawbone and part of a skull in a pit near Piltdown, England. The jawbone was apelike but had teeth that showed were similar to human teeth. The skull, on the other hand, was very humanlike. These two specimens were combined to form what was called Piltdown man, which was calculated to be 500,000 years old. The whole thing turned out to be an elaborate hoax. The skull was found to be indeed human about 500 years old, while the jaw was that of a modern female orangutan whose teeth had been filed to crudely resemble the human wear pattern. G. PEKING MAN: There was also the Peking man which was once presented as the missing link from ape-man but has now been reclassified as a fully developed human without any ape-like qualities. H. Another so-called missing link was put together by putting together bits and pieces of bones that were found scattered over about a mile and put together to get the missing link. Did you catch that? They found bits and pieces of bones scattered over 1 MILE and put them all together to make one ape man! I. Where is all this so-called scientific research? I ll tell you it is in the biased minds so-called scientists and artists with wild imaginations! The unbiased scientific truth is that the vital evidence for the evolutionary side is made up of fakes, mistakes, false datings that shift to fit the theory better, and classifications that go against clear anatomical evidence. If we did not evolve from apes what about the cave man? A. The cave man has always been thought to have been part of the evolutionary process. He is referred to as the Neanderthals because some fossils were found in a cave near the Neanderthal valley in Germany. If the actual fossils were studied by an objective person, these cavemen would not seem any different than today s modern man. Interestingly, the brain size (based on cranial capacity) of Neanderthal man was actually larger than average for that of modern man, though this is rarely emphasized. B. In addition to anatomical evidence, there is a growing body of cultural evidence for the fully human status of Neanderthals. They buried their dead and had elaborate funeral customs that included arranging the body and covering it with flowers. They made a variety of stone tools and worked with skins and leather. A wood flute was recently discovered among Neanderthal remains. There is even evidence that suggests that he engaged in medical care. Some Neanderthal specimens show evidence of survival to old age despite numerous wounds, broken bones, blindness, and disease. This suggests that these individuals were cared for and nurtured by others who showed human compassion. C. So did apelike men live in caves and is this proof that we descended from apes. Well, men did, in fact, live in caves, but they were no more apes than 30 million people in China or Afghanistan who live in caves today. More than likely the people who lived in caves were a very small percentage of the human race and it is possible that this type of living arrangement followed the great worldwide flood which brought on the Ice Age.
D. Still, efforts continue to be made to somehow dehumanize Neanderthal man. The Neanderthal was fully human and is not part of the evolutionary process. The apelike caveman myth is just that a myth! Conclusion A. Any unbiased research into the fossil record will clearly show that when humans first appear in the fossil record they are already fully human. It is this abrupt appearance of our ancestors in completely human form that makes the human fossil record compatible with the concept of Special Creation. B. There is no fossil evidence that man is the product of evolution. The missing links are still missing because they simply do not exist. The Bible clearly states, Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7). C. No, we are not descended from apes. Rather, God created man as the crown of His creation on Day Six. We are a special creation of God, with a purpose and plan, made in His image, to bring Him glory.