It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 1 Creation or Evolution? Program No. 1258 SPEAKER: JOHN BRADSHAW, KEN HAM To hear some people tell the story, if you believe that God created the Earth, then you re out of touch, stuck in the past, ignorant of science, and backward thinking. Which would mean, of course, that the Bible cannot then be trusted. Its opening words say that God created the Earth, and the opening chapter says He did it in six days. It would also mean that Jesus was out of touch, stuck in the past, ignorant of science, and backward thinking. After all, Jesus believed the creation story. He said in Mark 10:6: But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. Jesus believed that God made Adam and Eve, plain and simple. And He believed that God made the Sabbath day, which was given on the seventh day of the creation week. Jesus said in Mark 2:27: The Sabbath was made for man Made in the beginning, when God created the Earth. John 1:3 says, All things were made by Him. While in Mark 13:19, Jesus referred to the beginning of the creation which God created. In the Bible, Paul wrote about creation. Peter wrote about creation. John wrote about creation. But a lot of people today do not believe that God created the world. Now, let s ask ourselves why that might be. Is it because evolutionists are fools? Well, I don t think that s the reason. In fact, many evolutionists ask important questions about origins that demand answers. So, how is it that the Bible can say the earth is young, just thousands of years old, and a respected scientist, relying on accepted scientific principles and practices, would say that the Bible is wrong and not just wrong, but wrong by millions and millions of years?
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 2 Can intelligent, thinking people be scientifically accurate while still believing what the Bible says on the subject of creation? To find out, I visited the creation museum in Northern Kentucky a stone s throw from Cincinnati, Ohio. The museum covers an area of 70,000 square feet, a little less than two acres comfortably bigger than a football field and it s dedicated to promoting the Biblical view of creation. I spoke with Creation Museum President Ken Ham, who s originally from Australia. And I started by asking him about theistic evolution, the idea that evolution is a process used by God to effect creation. KEN HAM: Within the church, and you know there are different denominations, you will also find different views of eschatology dealing with end times, different views even of baptism, and different views of other issues. By and large, when you are arguing about such things as eschatology or baptism or whatever it is, speaking in tongues, or any number of those different issues, you are arguing from the Bible. It might be people s view of the church or people s view of Israel, or people s view of Daniel, Ezekiel or Revelation. JOHN BRADSHAW: Right. KH: But you see, the reason there are different views of Genesis, like theistic evolution, for instance, is not because you are arguing from Scripture it s because you are arguing outside of Scripture. You are really taking the secular view of the day and you add it to the Bible in Genesis, and then you have to reinterpret the clear words of Genesis, which means that the big issue for me is that it s an authority issue. You are unlocking a door to say you don t have to take this as written. You are not using God s Word to judge man s word. You are using man s ideas outside of Scripture, which you don t get from Scripture. And then you are forcing them onto God s Word. For instance, the Bible makes it clear that God took dust and made a man. So if you are going to believe in theistic evolution, you are going to say that God used evolution, then the process of some ape-like ancestor changing into a human even in Matthew 19 when Jesus was quoting Genesis when talking about marriage, He was talking about the one flesh the fact that Eve came from Adam. See, if you are going to believe in evolution, then Adam came from an ape-man and Eve came from an ape-woman. But the Bible makes it very clear and Jesus Himself who is the Word, and who is the Son of God Jesus quoted from Genesis, talking about your one flesh, because the woman came from the man. She did not come from an ape-woman.
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 3 And so, really, for theistic evolutionists, they are really undermining Biblical authority because they are reinterpreting God s Word by forcing man s ideas on God s Word. Secondly, they are really destroying the whole basis of marriage, if you think about it, and of course, that all relates to Christ and His relationship to the church in the New Testament. But there is even something else as well, and that s this: All the different positions on Genesis have one thing in common. JB: What s that? KH: Putting millions of years in the Bible. The idea of millions of years came from atheists, deists, people who believed in naturalism, who wanted to explain life without God, wanted to get rid of the flood of Noah s day they wanted to come up with a way of explaining the world without God. Back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, these people postulated the idea that the fossil layers we see over the earth s surface were laid down over millions of years, and that happened before man. And so you ll find that in these compromised positions, people are trying to come up with some new or different way to fit millions of years and/or evolution into the Bible. And if you believe in millions of years, here s my challenge for people. If you take Genesis 1:29, 30, and you read it exactly the same way that Jesus quotes from Genesis, then Adam and Eve ate fruit all vegetarian and the animals were vegetarian. They ate plants. Man wasn t told to eat meat until after the flood, in Genesis 9:3, when God laid that out. But originally, they were all vegetarian. In the fossil record, supposedly existing millions of years before man if you believe in millions of years as a Christian, you ve got lots of examples of animals eating each other, fish eating each other, bones in the stomachs of other animals, and so on. What are they going to do with that? Next, doesn t the Bible clearly tell us in Genesis that as a result of the curse, thorns and thistles came into existence? JB: That s correct. KH: The fossil record is said to have existed millions of years before man, right? There are a lot of examples of fossil thorns said to be hundreds of millions of years old. But wait a minute! You ve got all these thorns, millions of years before man sinned? Then thorns didn t come after the curse. There are many examples of diseases in the fossil bones. For instance, there s a brain tumor in a dinosaur fossil. There s evidence
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 4 of abscesses, arthritis, cancer, all sorts of diseases. In fact, there are even medical researchers today who use the fossil bones to help people understand how to look for certain diseases. Now, when God finished creating everything, He said everything He made was very good. So, if you are going to believe in millions of years, God said brain tumors were very good, and that cancer was very good? See, from a perspective of Scripture, you can t have the brain tumors, cancer, arthritis and abscesses that you see in the fossil record animals eating each other, thorns, supposedly millions of years before man. And so, therefore, the whole fossil record has to come after sin. When you look at the fossil record, you see these fossils laid down in sedimentary layers over the earth. How would you explain billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth? I mean, 70% of the earth s surfaces is covered in sedimentary strata. You know what the Bible actually tells us? JB: What s that? KH: That there was a global flood. And if there really was a global flood, you d expect to find billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth, and that s what you find. JB: And that s what you find. KH: So what should you think when a fossil is discovered that seems to indicate human beings were on this planet millions of years ago when the Bible says no such thing? KH: In a way, the fact that we do have a Lucy is strong enough to actually draw out a particular interpretation which is she was some kind of ape. JB: More in just a moment EVERY WORD DEVOTIONAL When I read about a 14-year-old girl executed for adultery, I was thankful that Jesus doesn t mete out justice the way some people do. The Monarch of the universe who could throw the book at all of us if He wished prefers to win us with love rather than brutalize us. Here s what God says in Jeremiah 9:24: But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight, says the Lord. God is a God of justice, that s true. But God deals kindly with His people. He s patient and merciful toward sinners, and instead of looking to do away with us, He
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 5 does all He can to win us and convince us that He s good. I hope you remember this verse today. Unlike humans, God is only good. RETURN TO PROGRAM JB: Today I m discussing creation and evolution with Ken Ham, the president of the Creation Museum in Northern Kentucky. Ken s been teaching creation for decades, so I asked him about Lucy. In 1974, an American anthropologist working in Ethiopia discovered fossilized remains of what became known as Lucy. Lucy was actually about 40% of a skeleton. Many people believe this skeleton to be several millions of years old, and either a direct ancestor of today s human beings, or closely related. If Lucy is actually a human or human ancestor and is 3 million-plus years old, there goes the idea of a young Earth that is less than 10,000 years old. So I asked Ken Ham if 40% of an old skeleton gives enough evidence of human beings living millions of years ago. KH: In a way, the evidence we do have of Lucy is strong enough to actually draw out a particular interpretation that she was some kind of ape. And it is interesting. See, when you dig up a skull, by using artistic license, you can make the head on that skull look ape-like or human-like. You can take an ape skull and make it look a bit human-like. You can take a human skull and make it look ape-like. If you want Lucy to be human-like? Well, you want to have short arms, because apes have longer arms. And so, therefore, where the broken bones are, they put them together, but when you look at them, they are tapered, indicating that they should be apart. And so we put them apart to where we believe they should be, showing she really had long arms, right? Like an ape, which is what the discoverer of Lucy said she was. Then, when you look at the leg bones, and with those, they want the opposite to happen. Because apes have shorter legs, they want them to have longer legs, so for the leg bones, they actually put those bones apart, whereas when we look at them, it looks like they should be together. So they do the opposite of what they should do because they want to make it into something that it s really not. But when you ve just got the bones and you don t have the flesh and the hair and you can t see it, that s how people can be indoctrinated in evolution, because an evolutionist can take those bones and arrange them in a particular way shorten the arms, and lengthen the legs, or the rest of it, do what they want to do with them, and then put flesh and hair on them and make it look sort of half-human-like. They can make the eyes look a particular way and make it look a bit humanlike, and that s what they do.
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 6 JB: Here s a question I think everyone has asked at some time or another: how do you fit dinosaurs into the Bible story, when many scientists tell us dinosaurs lived millions of years ago? KH: You ve got crocodiles, and the nautilus, and the horseshoe crab and so on. You ve got these creatures that according to evolutionists lived before dinosaurs, and then must have lived with dinosaurs years ago. Then supposedly dinosaurs died out, and all these others lived on and they are still living with us today. So, the point is, these creatures are living with us today, so why is it so stupid to think that dinosaurs could not live with people? Now, most people have the wrong idea about dinosaurs. They think they are all great big monsters. The word dinosaur was first used in 1841 by an Englishman, Sir Richard Owen, and it comes two Greek words, deinos sauros. Translated, it means terrible lizard. And so people get the idea that they are all great big monsters. The average size of a dinosaur is only the size of a sheep, a shepherd dog. There are many dinosaurs as small as chickens. The mosasaurus, when it hatched out of an egg, was only the size of a mouse. So we shouldn t get the idea that dinosaurs were all great big monsters. Secondly, people think that there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different types of dinosaurs. Actually, there were only about 50 families of dinosaurs, which means about 50 kinds. We would say, in most instances not all, but most instances that the kind would be more at the family level of classification. And we have actually had, for instance, some scientists working on how many kinds of land animals are there on the earth. Not species, but how many kinds, actual kinds. Because you know deer and moose are the same kind, alpacas, llamas, one hump-camels, two-hump camels are all the same kind, zebras, horses are all the same kind. That s why at the petting zoo here, we have a zorse and a zedonk and so on. Actually, our scientists believe there is probably about a thousand kinds of land animals JB: And 50 kinds of dinosaurs. KH: and 50 kinds of dinosaurs well, there are 50 families of dinosaurs, so there are about 50 kinds. We would say dinosaurs were made on day six because all land animals were made on day six of the creation week. We believe those days are ordinary days. The Hebrew word yom, when it s used with evening, morning, number or night, means an ordinary day. JB: A 24-hour period.
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 7 KH: The only reason many Christians don t believe that is not because of what the Hebrew words mean, it s because they are trying to force millions of years into the Bible. In fact, that s where our seven-day week comes from. It s in Exodus 20:11, the basis of the Fourth Commandment: 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. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. So a seven-day week is based upon the creation week. You know, if God made everything in six million years and rested for millions of years, we could go into retirement now. JB: Yes we could. KH: So you see, those days are ordinary days. On day six, God made the land animals and he made the first two people, Adam and Eve. Dinosaurs are land animals. Dinosaurs were beside Adam and Eve. I have people say to me, But the word dinosaur is not in the Bible. To that I say, Well, of course not. You know, why the word dinosaur isn t in the Bible? Well, it s the same reason you don t have the word e-mail in the Bible. It s a modern word. JB: Sure KH: The word dinosaur is a modern word. It was made up in 1841. In fact, I do believe there is a dinosaur described in detail, in the Bible, more than most other animals. In the book of Job, Job 40:15, he says behold now behemoth, talking to Job about this animal that lived with him. He said he was a chief of the ways of mouth. The Hebrew language there implies it s the largest land animal God made, and the largest animal we know of that lived on the land from what we ve found is the sauropod dinosaur. Now, they did grow very large, by the way, though their eggs would not have been much bigger than the size of a football. That s the biggest egg we found. But behemoth everything about it is big and strong. It has a tail like a cedar tree. (Job 40:17) I notice that some Bibles say it was an elephant or hippopotamus. Have you ever seen an elephant s tail? It looks like a piece of rope dangling down.
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 8 Or if you see a hippo tail, it s like a flap of skin. A cedar tree? No, I don t think so. It s more, we believe, the description of a sauropod dinosaur. You see, people say, Well what happened to the dinosaurs? Well, why aren t you interested in the dodo bird? What happened to the dodo bird? What happened to the moa? JB: The moa in New Zealand. That s right. Great big bird, nine feet tall. KH: It s gone now. JB: Gone. KH: I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of animals that have become extinct. People think it s the dinosaurs that are the big mystery, but there are lots of animals that are becoming extinct because of changing conditions. I mean, that s why we have endangered species programs. I tell people the reason dinosaurs became extinct is we didn t start our endangered species programs early enough! JB: Today on It Is Written I m talking with Ken Ham about creation and evolution. I asked Ken why what a person believes about creation and evolution really matters at all. KH: Do you believe Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead? JB: Yes, I do. KH: Where did you get that from? JB: Right out of the Bible. KH: Out of the bible? JB: Yeah. KH: So you take that as the authoritative Word of God. JB: Most definitely. KH: So you believe in the virgin birth too? JB: Sure, it s right there in the Bible. KH: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. Secular scientists say that you can t have a man rising from the dead, and you can t have a virgin birth. You know, if I was to go
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 9 through the Bible in what I call our mainline churches, and I was to say: Do you believe feeding thousands of people is a miracle? JB: They ll say, Yes, sure. KH: They ll say yes. How do you know? Well, the Bible says so. Do you believe Jesus walked on water? Oh yes. How do you know? The Bible says so. Do you believe that a man was swallowed by a fish and then lived in that fish for three days? How do you know? The Bible says so. As soon as you get to Genesis in this day and age, and even in the church, and you talk about what God created in six days, that man was made from dust and woman from his side, that there was a global flood, and that death came after sin, here is what we hear: Oh no. And if you go outside of Scripture, because of these ideas of millions of years, and because of evolution, that means you have to reinterpret the days. What is happening is this: If we don t take a stand on the creation account in Genesis, and if we allow outside ideas to reinterpret that, we are unlocking a door. The door we are unlocking is that we are telling future generations that you don t have to take God s Word as written here. It puts them on a slippery slide of unbelief through the whole of Scripture. You tell me to believe this bit of the Bible over here, but that bit doesn t matter. I can take man s ideas and reinterpret here, but I am not allowed to do that over here. It s hypocrisy. God s Word came under attack at the beginning, and that attack has continued down through the ages. It has never abated. It s the same attack, yet it manifests itself in different ways and different eras of history. For instance, when Peter and Paul were preaching about the resurrection, did they ever get the question: Hey, that s all very well, preaching about the resurrection. What do you do with carbon dating? Did people like Martin Luther when he nailed the theses on the door of the church did someone come up to him and say, That s all very well to nail those on the door of the church. But I want to know about dinosaurs. Well, the word dinosaur was not invented until 1841. My point is this. There is a particular Genesis 3 attack in our day. People in past ages had to deal with all sorts of attacks on the Bible gnosticism and all sorts of heresies and so on. I believe today that the teaching of evolution millions of years, big bang and so on that permeates the world, wherever you ve got an education system, access to the Internet, access to television, people have heard of evolution and millions of years.
It Is Written Script: 1258 Creation or Evolution? Page 10 It permeates museums around the world, zoos around the world. Just about everybody has heard about evolution. I believe that it is the Genesis 3 attack of our day. Your salvation is not conditioned upon the age of the earth and whether you believe in evolution or the days of creation. The condition is upon faith in Christ, right? But believing in evolution for millions of years doesn t necessarily affect your salvation. There are many Christians that believe in millions of years many Christians that believe in evolution. But what it does affect is how the next generation views Scripture itself. What I have given you is a long answer to get back to the fact that the issue is one of authority. Who is the authority? God or man? When you let man be an authority over God s Word and reinterpret God s Word because of outside ideas, you are unlocking a door so the next generation tends not to believe the Scripture as much, and the next generation doubts and disbelieves even more. And as time goes on, you would expect to see more and more in the younger generation leaving the church. JB: That s what we see today. Thank you for joining me on It Is Written for this fascinating subject: creation and evolution. Why don t we take a moment now and pray? We ll pray to the God of creation and ask His blessing and guidance. PRAYER: Our Father in Heaven, I thank you for the Bible the Bible that reveals to us that in the beginning, God created. Lord, I look forward to your continuing creative power. The Bible tells us that you will recreate this earth. We will dwell in a new earth someday. The Bible tells us that you are the God who can recreate a broken, human heart. Lord, would you do that work for us? We thank you today and we pray praising you, in Jesus name, Amen. It Is Written Box O Thousand Oaks, CA 91359 USA Tel: (805) 433-0210 Fax: (805) 433-0218 www.itiswritten.com