I have been praying for revival for several years. Revivals have come in different places across America over the years, but during this past year, the need for many churches to be revived by a move of the Holy Spirit has become increasingly important. I believe conviction of sins and repentance by church members is a key before awakenings can come to large numbers of the unsaved.
There is a growing awareness in my spirit that America’s tolerance of Darwinian evolution in schools and in our culture is one of the sins of which churches need to repent. Why do we tolerate our children being taught that humans evolved from a one-celled organism that spontaneously arose from just the right chemicals and conditions in a warm pond when both the Bible and nature tell us otherwise? Is God not being robbed of the glory due Him for creating all living things and humans made in His image, as well as for everything that exists? The National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Teachers Association, and practically every university science department is in agreement that science can only be explained by natural processes. Anything taught or published that suggests a connection to something supernatural is automatically eliminated from the field of science (and Truth according to secular reasoning). Superstitious beliefs certainly have no place in science, but great harm has come to children who are taught that unguided natural processes explain where they come from.
There is a key question that every person on earth will eventually seek to answer, because it is one of the foundations on which one’s basic beliefs about life are built. This very important question is Where did I come from? It is no accident that the answer is found in the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Nor was it superfluous that Matthew and Luke recorded the ancestors of Joseph and Mary, the earthly parents of Jesus, even though Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. Matthew’s account goes back to David and Abraham. Luke’s account goes back to Adam.
In fact, the first and second chapters of Genesis teach that Adam and Eve were the original ancestors of all people on earth. They were planned, designed and created by God. Created fully mature, they were able to speak and understand a language, somewhat like a computer can be programmed to understand and respond to commands. But, distinctly different from computers, the first humans were able to think, reason, make decisions of their own free will, and enjoy a relationship with their Creator.
Throughout history, many explanations for where we came from have been proposed. The Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is clearly declared in the Bible as the Creator of everything. False gods and goddesses, personified heavenly bodies, deified men and women, demons, and even respected scientists have claimed answers to this important question. During the period of history known as the Enlightenment, human reasoning often provided answers that were elevated above God’s wisdom.
During this time, Deism became a widely popular philosophy, finding a way not to be accountable to God, but unable to ignore that He created the heavens, the earth, all living things, and humans. Deism taught that God created a perfect universe and gave humans such an intelligent mind that human reasoning should be able to find the answers for all problems. Therefore, there was no further need for Him to intervene in what He had made. This left no need for the salvation provided by Jesus. It also meant that petitions for God’s intervention to problems were not needed. In 1859 when Charles Darwin proposed that all life evolved by means of natural processes, many Deist made an easy switch to agnosticism or outright atheism.
Darwin was born as the Enlightenment was well underway, and he had a huge influence on how to answer where did I come from? He was a brilliant scientist and made some important observations. He made a five-year trip around the world on a ship as the ship’s naturalist. During this time, he spent several weeks on the Galapagos Islands. He observed that there seemed to be several different varieties, or even species, of finch birds on the islands. He rationally proposed that at some time in the past, a few pioneer finch birds had somehow landed on the islands, and the present population of finch birds were all descendants of those original few ancestors. He proposed that their different characteristics evolved over time from a process he described as natural selection. The birds who were best able to survive in their environments passed their favorable traits on to their offspring, and those least able to survive generally did not pass their traits on to offspring. In other words, the fittest birds survived. He surmised that the same pattern had occurred in iguanas and tortoises, which seem to have evolved in the same way as the finch birds.
Other scientists noted many groups of plants and animals also appeared to have common ancestor parents. For example, all varieties of cats may have evolved from the original God-created parents partly by means of natural selection to produce lions, tigers, panthers, leopards, house cats and other felines. Lions and tigers do not ordinarily mate in the wild, but in captivity there have been several cases of lions and tigers producing liger and tigon kittens. The ability of animals to mate and produce live offspring is a strong indication they had a common ancestor at one time. Dogs and wolves and dogs and coyotes are also able to mate and have live offspring, indicating they had common ancestor parents at one time.
Darwin carefully studied his observations and concluded that finch birds, iguanas, and tortoises, as well as other groups of plants and animals descended from common ancestors. Furthermore, he believed natural selection played a role in the evolutionary process. So far these are examples of microevolution, which is legitimate science.
But then Darwin took a giant leap of faith and proposed something very different, known as macroevolution. He started with strong, likely assumptions, such as all finch birds had common ancestor parents and many other groups of living things showed similar evidence of evolution over time. He knew that all living things were made of cells and contained many of the same chemicals. Then he extrapolated his observations and proposed that instead of many common ancestors, there was only one. His theory (actually a hypothesis) was that ALL living things and once living things—plants, animals, microbes, and humans—evolved from a single one-celled common ancestor that formed by natural processes when just the right chemicals and conditions came together to spontaneously become a living organism. Over millions of years, new organisms would gradually evolve from the original common ancestor by means of natural selection and other natural processes.
This proposal is a problem for Christians. Additional posts will discuss this topic.