EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE

The Rev. J.K. Van Baalen in his recent article published in The Reformed Journal (October 1966) and entitled, “Evolution and the Bible.” has added some material to that presented in earlier issues by Professor Lewis B. Smedes. He also argues that God had to make use of evolution in producing the human race. He even goes so far as to say that Hebrews 11:3 is “so definitely on the side of the evolutionists that it fills one with a sense of shame to think that it could ever have been enlisted by literalists against evolution as God’s way of bringing the universe to completion.” Let us follow him and quote the translation by Phillips: “And it is after all only by faith that our minds accept as fact that the whole scheme of time and space was created by God’s command—that the world which we can see has come into being through principles that are invisible.” This means, then, that God never created anything except through evolution; that is, development derived from things already in existence in a visible way. God was forced to make use of matter that was invisible and not created previously by Him. He certainly did not make Adam out of “the dust of the earth.” Adam grew out of some high-class animals, according to the high priests of evolution. And as for trees, says our clever author, “nowadays it lakes the earth a great many years to ‘bring forth’ a tree out of a seed.”

The drift of this sort of reasoning is simply that we must no longer accept the Bible as the Word of God. We shall have to make use of human reasoning in order to replace the meaning of the Bible with human concepts and inventions produced under the inspiration of Satan. One day I had in my study in Ann Arbor a certain Calvinist pastor who told me that there never was a man named Adam nor a woman called Eve. When 1 asked him about the verse by Paul to the effect that as in one man we are all under damnation, and so through another man we must be saved from damnation, he argued that Paul made a mistake. since the word anthropos for man should have been given in the plural form. This learned pastor has picked up his valuable information in the Union Theological Seminary. after having learned much about evolution in Hope College.

Professor Smedes states on p. 17 of The Reformed Journal dated December 1965 that “others among us are sure that any kind of evolution—whether it is called theistic evolution or progressive creationism (there is no difference) —is a flat denial of the Bible.” We must remember Galileo. But merely because Galileo was right in his view of the heliocentric theory does not mean that all opponents of the Christian religion are correct also by attacking orthodox Christianity! Every sound scholar knows very well that evolution and creation are diametrically opposed to each other. Jesus Christ did not say without good reason to some of his opponents: “You are of your father the devil; he was a liar from the beginning.” Every person who renders services to Satan is automatically blinded by his unfortunate action.

Is it actually scientific and necessary to make concessions to the evolutionary theory?

Not only have the top scientists in Russia given up their faith in Darwinian evolution but the famous French encyclopedia in its large volume devoted to evolution has declared that evolution is impossible. The “high priests of science” continue to tell the public that evolution is proved to be a fact, because that is what people want to believe, while they themselves know that it is a fake, pure and simple.

In Volume V, section 82 of this encyclopedia we find that “contemporary geologists are all struck by the abrupt appearances of new animal and plant forms, and their opinion has all the more value because in that which concerns the evolutionary formation, and those who adopted it, their opinion is not lightly presented by them.” Arambourg showed that “after a period of stability maintained until the beginning of the Tertiary epoch, the Eocene saw the abrupt appearance of a group of Acanthropterygians; no dircct line of connection could have been established between those fauns.” As for mollusks, the top experts in France have concluded that “many of them see their line continued until this day.” As far as plants are concerned, “the observations and conclusions are the same. The learned French paleobotanist Carpentier in adopting the ideas of the most erudite English scholar in this field, Seward. says: ‘That which characterizes above all the evolution of the plant realm is not at all the progressive development but the persistent types and the appearance, apparently sudden, of new types (Psilophytes of the Devonian; Pteridosperians at the end of the Primary Epoch; Cycades of the Jurassical; Angiosperms of the Cretace),” Certain marine algae are also mentioned, funerals the pastors will state that the human body “which, being supplied with limestone, are admirably returns to the dust whence it had come in part. The fossilized. One may see suddenly and simultaneously prophets of evolution insist upon the transition from appearing at the same depth, and associated with the an animal body into a human body. The very idea of same animals today the group of Melobesians with all creation is repulsive to them, and their main concern the same kinds we actually recognize now…They is to wipe away the original sin of Adam and Eve,have no ancestors; on the contrary, we can trace some with the consequent need of a divine Savior. Thus it of their lineages of species until Our day. The principles of evolution would want the least perfected to history of civilization start man with utter barbarism be the most ancient. To that law, what exceptions!”

The experts in Europe continue in this vein: “There appears constantly and from the pens of reputable scholars this question, this phrase: ‘Only the paleontological data convince us of the reality of evolution.’” Then the encyclopedia contains this sensational report: “Now the data of paleontology demonstrate, all the contrary. that there has been no evolution, at least not in the great groups. The paleontologists have above all been struck by these two series of facts: the abrupt appearances of groups and the immense duration of times during which certain lineages maintained themselves nearly identical with each other.” It is often impossible to “find their ancestors in the most ancient soils.” In many cases new names were given to plants or animals which were after all merely the same as those that existed long ago! “The Annelides of the Cambrian in the United States, discovered by Walcott, are identical with the Annelides now living in existing waters. The Nautiles have n(‘ver changed until our times.” Consequently, “it is not necessary to admit total renewal of fauns and figures, as the first geologists thought.” Next we have this in italics: “There is no time left for making such an evolution of beings, if in this manner they evolved.” In other words, the earth is not old enough to allow for genuine evolution. Nevertheless, these European scholars talk about a span of 400,000,000 years involved in their calculations, and the planet itself as being about two billion years old! They draw this conclusion: “Since the progress of evolution during the 400 million years about which we know was just about zero, the whole of evolution must be relegated to the previous billion years, which seems a bold theory, don’t you think?”

In the light of these conclusions—so devastating to the evolutionary theory and yet made by men who have worked with this hypothesis—it is amazing that some Christian leaders seem to accept evolution as a fact. They would do well to consider the moral and spiritual consequences of accepting such a view.

Van Baalen ridicules the creation of man “of the dust of the earth.” He refers to the “popular representation” which has God making “a mud doll and breathing into it thousands of nerves, sinews, and the circulatory system; thereupon He ‘breathed into its nostrils the breath of life,’ and lo, there was the first man, created in the image of God.” What the Bible has in mind, however, is that in the human body there is much water and various chemical substances similar to ingredients in the soil. For that reason at many funerals the pastors will state that the human body returns to the dust whence it had come in part. The prophets of evolution insist upon the transition from an animal body into a human body. The very idea of creation is repulsive to them, and their main concern is to wipe away the original sin of Adam and Eve,with the consequent need of a divine Savior. Thus it happens that practically all the textbooks covering the history of civilization start man with utter barbarism and guide him into a high level of civilization. In a subtle and indirect manner the pupils discover that there never was such a thing as the fall of man, for that must disappear from the minds of all Christian students. Even in the Christian high schools and colleges teachers no longer dare to use a textbook that mentions the creation of Adam and Eve. And in the public schools it is customary to refute the chief basis of the Christian religion. contrary to the decree issued in 1963 by the Supreme Court in Washington, which declares that such practices are henceforth forbidden. Gradually the great apostasy predicted in the New Testament is undermining the moral fabric of our nation. No longer are our young people warned about the punishment that follows sinful living and thinking.

“Since the time of Schleiermacher -and using him as an example -practically every neo-Protestant theologian, be he numbered among the originators of the movement or simply a follower, has felt himself called upon to rethink’ every single theological concept and every single theological position. They have ‘repaired’ and ‘reformed’ so thoroughly, especially on the faith of the church in Christ and Scripture, that today it is highly improbable that lecturers and professors within Protestant Christianity would be recognized as orthodox teachers by the church fathers of Nicea, Chalcedon, and Augsburg. Almost without exception they would have been rejected, deposed, or placed under ban as falsifiers of Christianity, not because they happened to produce some unfortunate dogmatic formulations but for changing the FOUNDATIONS of the faith and life of the church.”

VALEN SENSTAD in The Word That Can Never Die