Welcome to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. In this program, we want to encourage you in your Christian faith by showing how scientific evidence supports the Bible, particularly the Genesis account. The book of Genesis lays the foundation for all matters addressed in the rest of the Bible. The nature of God, His sovereignty in creation, man's purpose, sin, marriage, family, and why we need a Savior are all introduced and explained in Genesis. When we see that the first and most foundational book of the Bible can be trusted in all matters, including science, it builds confidence in the rest of the inspired word all the way to Revelation.
On today's show, we'll get to hear from Dr. Jake Hebert, physicist and research associate with the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Dr. Hebert. Christians who accept the idea of millions of years may be unaware that they are holding to a logically inconsistent position.
On the one hand, they profess to believe the Bible and to believe that it's God's word, but they fail to accept Genesis 1 through 2 as written. I think a lot of these Christians probably deep down are uncomfortable with the obvious tension between the Bible's claim that God made everything in six days and the claims of secular scientists that everything's the result of an evolutionary process lasting billions of years. But they may tell themselves that it's not that big a deal. Yes, it does seem logically inconsistent to take the rest of Scripture at face value, but not those first few chapters. But they may have convinced themselves that they can live with that inconsistency.
The problem with that, however, is that when you do that, you end up logically undermining the entire Bible. This compromise is not going to stay confined to Genesis chapters 1 and 2. It's going to spill over to other parts of the Bible. For instance, we have these rock layers all over the world, what we call sedimentary rocks, and within those rocks are the fossilized remains of billions of plants and animals. And if it really is true, as the secular scientists claim, that those rocks are millions or billions of years old, well, then obviously the fossilized remains in them must also be millions of years old.
We have fossilized thorns within these rock layers.
Well, what does the Bible say about thorns? In Genesis chapter 3, verses 17 through 18, It says, then to Adam, he said, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake, and toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. The problem here is that according to evolutionary thinking, modern quote-unquote humans did not appear until relatively recently.
Yet thorns were already supposedly in existence for millions of years, even hundreds of millions of years before people supposedly came about.
So how can thorns and thistles be punishment for man's sin if they were already in existence before men even existed? And what makes that even worse is that that very same chapter of Genesis, Genesis chapter 3, is the same part of the Bible that gives us the very first promise of a Redeemer who would save us and defeat the devil. Genesis 3.15, God is speaking and he says, and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. And so Christian theologians are practically unanimous.
They universally agree this is a prophecy about the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ, and it's in Genesis chapter 3.
So if Genesis chapter 3 is wrong about thorns and thistles, then how can we be confident that it's not wrong about the promise of a coming Redeemer as well? But the problems don't stop there. Remember that we just said that these fossils are found in water-deposited rocks. You have billions of these fossils in these rocks. Many of them are mangled.
They show evidence of catastrophic, violent death. That would seem to be face-value evidence for the Genesis flood, yet the evolutionists claim there's no evidence for a global flood. And unfortunately, a lot of Christians, and I want to say this as gently as I know how, they tend to rather naively take that claim of secular scientists at face value. And yet, the Apostle Peter prophesied that there would come in the last days scoffers that will deny these biblical truths. And Peter said, knowing this first, that scoffers will come.
In the last days, walking according to their own lust and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were of old and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
So what do we expect these scoffers to say? Are they going to say, yes, these water deposited rocks and the billions of animal fossils within them, they sure do look like a worldwide flood, but I love my sin too much to admit that? No, of course not. Of course they're going to try to rationalize their disobedience somehow. And that's exactly what the Apostle Peter told us.
He told us that they have a philosophy that says all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. And we call this philosophy uniformitarianism. And according to this passage, which is 2 Peter chapter 3, Peter tells us that these scoffers will deny three. Things. They're going to deny that God created the world in verse 5.
They will deny that God destroyed the world with a flood in the days of Noah in verse six, and they will deny that the Lord Jesus is coming again in verse four of chapter three.
Now of course that all sounds vaguely familiar, and that sounds exactly like what evolutionists say.
So, we're going to come back in a moment and discuss this in more detail in our next segment. Let's take a short break. Stay with us. What happened to the dinosaurs? Are monkeys and people the same?
Why do we live on Earth and not some other planet? Kids have some great questions about God's creation, but do you have the answers for them? At the Institute for Creation Research, our scientists and Bible scholars have produced The Guide to Creation Basics. This book contains full-colored images and fascinating commentary from experts in biology, geology, astronomy, and biblical study. Guide to Creation Basics can help teach your children how the animals could fit on Noah's Ark, how dinosaurs and humans could live at the same time, and how God's power and wisdom can be seen in something as small as a single cell.
Find basic answers to your child's biggest creation questions. Order your copy of Guide to Creation Basics from the Institute for Creation Research by calling 800-628-7640 or visiting www.icr.org. Welcome back to Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research. Here's Dr. Hebert.
Well, we just saw earlier that the Apostle Peter warned us in his second epistle, chapter 3, that there's going to come scoffers one day who are going to deny that God created the universe, they're going to deny that there was a global worldwide flood, and they're going to deny that the Lord Jesus is coming again.
Well, that all sounds vaguely familiar. That's exactly what evolutionists say. And the Apostle Peter was warning us about this. But suppose we ignore Peter's warning and we accept those claims that the evolutionists are making at face value.
Well in that case, we would be accepting their claim that these water deposited rocks and the fossils within them are not the result of the Genesis flood. They claim instead that they were deposited slowly over millions of years.
Now, if that's true, well, then where is the evidence for a flood? If those rocks and fossils really did form slowly over millions of years, then it looks like there isn't any evidence for a flood, at least a global flood. Yet, how can you have a global flood that left behind no evidence?
So, in that case, you have to resort to contortions. You either have to say that the flood was a tranquil flood that left behind no geological evidence that it occurred, or you have to say that the flood really wasn't a global event.
Well, the idea of a tranquil flood is geologically impossible. There's no such thing as a tranquil flood. If the flood really did happen the way the Bible says it did, it would have deposited those rocks and fossils. And furthermore, it's very clear from scripture the flood was global. Genesis chapter 7, verses 18 through 22, has at least six indications that this really was a global flood.
The passage states. And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed 15 cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, and cattle and beasts, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the Spirit of life, all that was on the dry land died. I mean, how many ways does it have to be written?
It's very clear here. This is a worldwide global flood. But if you accept what the secular scientists are saying, not only do you have to explain away Genesis chapter 1 and 2 and then Genesis chapter 3, now you have to explain away the flood account as well, Genesis chapter 6 through 8. And yet the Apostle Peter himself affirmed that the flood was global. You can check that in 2 Peter 2, verse 5.
But if he's wrong about this, maybe he was also wrong about the transfiguration of Christ in Christ. Resurrection, which he testifies to in 2nd Peter 1, verses 16 through 18, and 1 Peter 3, verse 18.
So, what you see here is when you start compromising with Genesis, it ends up spilling over not only into the Old Testament, but into the New Testament as well. And it ends up undermining the authority of the Lord Jesus. There are at least three passages in the New Testament that make it very clear the Lord Jesus believed in a recent creation. Mark 10, 6 says that, but from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female, not billions of years after the creation, but from the beginning of the creation. Mark chapter 13, verse 19, and Luke chapter 11, verses 50 through 51.
The passage in Mark says, For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation, which God created until this time, nor ever shall be.
Well, if you've got tribulation, that means you have to have life. That can experience tribulation, but according to the evolutionary story, there was no life in the universe until billions of years after the creation. And yet according to this passage there was tribulation going on from the beginning of the creation, and we know that death and suffering entered the world as a result of Adam's sin. And of course, the Lord Jesus would know, right? Because he is the creator.
He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He doesn't change.
So if he testified that the universe is young, then obviously every Christian ought to believe that. And if he was wrong about that, how can he be the Son of God?
So what I'm trying to drive home here is that when you compromise with Genesis, you may think that that compromise is going to stay confined to the first two chapters. But it's not. It's going to spill over and it's going to affect the way you look at the rest of the Bible. We've got lots of resources on our website to help answer your questions, and we hope that you will avail yourselves of them and get informed on this issue. Thank you for joining us on Science, Scripture, and Salvation, a radio ministry of the Institute for Creation Research.
That's all the time we have for our program today, but we would love to connect with you through our website at icr.org. For over 45 years, ICR has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible's accuracy and authority by showing how science supports the Genesis creation account. Our scientists research the evidence for creation and communicate their findings through books, articles, DVD series, and conferences. Please visit our website at icr.org for more information about the latest scientific discoveries, to subscribe to our free magazine and devotional, and to locate our next creation conference at a venue near you. All of this and more at icr.org.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe to Science, Scripture, and Salvation on iTunes. Also, do us a favor and rate and review the show so that more listeners can find us. Thanks for listening and God bless.
