Linda Kimball
What kind of God do you believe in?
By Linda Kimball
Large numbers of people today believe that modern secular science has proven the earth and cosmos to be billions of years old, and that every living thing, from fish to dogs, apes and humans, evolved from a single cell which itself is the result of chance combination of chemicals. Most believe that primordial matter resulted from the Big Bang. Certain high profile Christians like Hugh Ross and the influential Evangelical theologians and scholars who support him, teach that God is both the energizing force behind the Big Bang and the director of evolutionary process.
Against this way of thinking, the Word of God authoritatively teaches a six day historical creation, which today is vastly unpopular with and downright offensive to scientifically enlightened theologians and their followers.
The rejection of the literal six day creation is an aberration of modernism, meaning liberal (pantheist) Protestantism and its' openly hostile 'secular' antitheist and atheist counterparts such as Marxist Communism and Secular Humanism.
Of the many early Church Fathers who wrote on Genesis, all but Augustine, who erred by teaching instantaneous creation, affirmed a literal, historic six day account of creation.
For instance, St. Cyril of Alexandria argued that higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to wrest and distort Genesis so as to conform it to Big Bang and other secular scientific assumptions is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
It's important that we understand that the Church Fathers weren't primitive, unscientific goat-herders as dishonest modernists have made them out to be, but rather highly intelligent, well-educated men. Many came from backgrounds of evolutionary pantheism, occultism and pagan animism thus were intimately familiar with much of what passes for contemporary secular science such as Big Bang and Steady State theories (evolutionary cosmogonies), inflationary models, vast ages, chance, the universal life force (serpent power, Zoë, evolution) and much more, even though by other designations.
Long before Darwin, Greek nature philosophers (600 – 100BC) were teaching primitive evolutionary conceptions, abiogenesis, chance, determinism, natural selection, transmigration, reincarnation and vast ages together with many other modern assumptions.
The fragments of Anaximander's (c. 610–546 BC) evolutionary speculations show he taught that 'humans originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish' while Democritus (c.460 – 370BC) taught that primitive people began to speak with 'confused' and 'unintelligible' sounds but 'gradually they articulated words.' (Evolution: An Ancient Pagan Idea, Paul James Griffith, creation.com)
The Greek Atomist Epicurus (341 – 270BC), the father of contemporary materialism and many of its' secular scientific assumptions, taught there was no need of a God or gods, for the Universe came about by a chance movement of atoms. (ibid)
Darwinism affirms the claim made by Epicurus that living beings created themselves, while modern evolutionary biology affirms Anaximander's claim that humans evolved from lower order life-forms.
With respect to old earth or vast ages, Plato and many other Greek philosophers taught that the present universe came about millions of years ago. Writing in the fourth century AD, Lactantius said:
"Plato and many others of the philosophers, since they were ignorant of the origin of all things, and of that primal period at which the world was made, said that many thousands of ages had passed since this beautiful arrangement of the world was completed ... ." (ibid)
After the Greeks, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (AD23 – 79) said we are so subject to chance,
"....that Chance herself takes the place of God; she proves that God is uncertain." (ibid)
Greek and Roman philosophers received these ideas from ancient Sumerians (Babylonians), Egyptians and Hindus whose Mysteries, nature philosophies and evolutionary cosmogonies extended back centuries before Greek and Roman civilization. For example, one Hindu belief was that Brahman (the Void or Universe) spontaneously generated itself (the modern theory of abiogenesis) as something like a seed or singularity (Cosmic Egg or Big Bang) about 4.3 billion years ago and then evolved under its' own power by which it expanded and formed all that exists:
"These Hindus believed in an eternal Universe that had cycles of rebirth, destruction and dormancy, known as 'kalpas,' rather like oscillating big bang theories. We also read in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita that the god Krishna says, 'I am the source from which all creatures evolve." (ibid, Griffith)
In India the doctrines of evolution/reincarnation/karma were thoroughly established from ancient times. They were expounded first in the Upanishads (c. 1000 BC – AD 4), the philosophical-mystical texts held to be the essence of the Vedas.
Representing the young earth view and resurrection of the dead (Acts 17: 16-34) the Apostle Paul contended against the Greek Epicureans (materialists) and Stoics (pantheists), representatives of Cosmic Egg theories (Big Bang), vast ages (old earth view), universal life force (evolution), void, atoms, animism (i.e. Karl Marx's animated 'divine thinking' matter), fate, determinism, and reabsorption after death.
Speaking to the nature sages, Paul said "this is what I'm going to proclaim to you,"
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth... he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
When Greek sages heard about the resurrection of the dead, many of them sneered due to their belief that the body is a rotting tomb within which their souls were trapped. Since they believed that the fall consisted of an inexplicable plunge from being as one with the impersonal One Substance, then salvation was reabsorption of soul into the One Substance, therefore the idea of bodily resurrection was repulsive. In "Adversus nationes" (2:37) Arnobius complains,
"If souls were of the Lord's race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine." (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
The framework behind the way of thinking which Paul contended against is naturalism, the ancient idea that living beings make themselves. Naturalism is like a leopard, meaning its' spots cannot be changed even by defiant Scriptural retrofitters like Teilhard de Chardin, Leonard Sweet, Hugh Ross and other natural science and evolution compromisers.
As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. What once was will be again. In this light, when Peter prophesied about the "scoffers" in "the last days" who claim that "everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation" (2 Peter 3:4) he is speaking of this generation of God-haters and theological compromisers, who being wise in their own wisdom, willingly reject the Authority of God and six day special creation in preference of ancient ways of thinking revised and revamped for our own age.
The real issue behind objections to literal six day special creation is what kind of God progressive creationists and evolutionary theists believe in and peddle to unsuspecting believers. This is a question that needs to be addressed because by espousing Big Bang and old earth views theological compromisers have elevated naturalism in the guise of secular science and evolution above the Word and Authority of God resulting in an upside-down exegesis consisting of abundant mind-boggling inconsistencies.
Their inverted creation account is in the claim of a six day creation that occurred at the end of billions of years of evolutionary process. Logically, this means that billions of creatures lived and died long before man arrived on the scene, making the Word (John 1:1), our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the cause of death and suffering rather than the fall of Adam. By making the fossil record the measure of a sequence of long ages, God becomes the cause of death and suffering because the history of life appears to be a record of ineptitude, extinctions and constant brutality for billions of years. In the words of the atheist astronomer and evolution promoter Carl Sagan (1934-1996), if God,
"....is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why is he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition." (Refuting Compromise, Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M., p. 220)
The Big Bang, old earth view also leads to a philosophy of moral relativism because if men were once something else, a genderless blob of matter and then later on lizards and even later still some kind of ape-like creature, then not only are we going to become something else – maybe divine supermen, god-men, super robots or cosmic beings – but nothing can be said about transgender, 'gay,' and lesbianism since all life forms ascended from a genderless blob of matter generated by the inexplicable explosion of a Cosmic Egg which may or may not involve a stumbling God shaped and molded by theologians who require Him to ignite the Big Bang.
With regard to soul/spirit, if life arose from chemicals and then billions of years later man evolved from lower life-forms, then his rational nature, his soul, differs not qualitatively but only quantitatively from the beasts. Like beasts, man is not a person but a creature of the earth. Like them he has no spirit – free will, higher mental faculties, and conscience. He is a fleshy androgynous robot or hominid whose brain is organized by the genome and the genome shaped by natural selection.
Dr. Sarfati argues that denial of the literal and historic meaning of Genesis (young earth view) is foundationally the result of 'imposing outside ideas upon the Bible.' Thus, it has 'baneful consequences which don't just stop with Genesis,' but adversely affect many areas. The atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically agrees:
"The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a savior. And I submit that puts Jesus...into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity." ("Atheism vs. Christianity," 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. Belief in a six day creation period about 6,000 years ago has been the authoritative teaching of the Church for most of its history and is essential for consistency in doctrine and apologetics. Only with a firm, unshakable foundation in Genesis are Christians able to stand strong in their faith.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God..." "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1: 1-2, 14
"Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." John 8:58 & 17:5
If God is really Who He said He is, if He is the God Who revealed Himself to man through Jesus Christ (Messiah), then He can call everything into existence in six literal days (Gen. 1), bring about a virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), be both God and man (Gen. 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Zechariah 12:10 & 13:7; 1 Chron. 17:1014), remove the curse due to Adam's fall (Gen 5:21-29), resurrect Himself from the dead and ascend unto Heaven (1 Pet. 1:3; Romans 1:4; Matthew 27:53) because for the Word Who became flesh, all of these things are very simple matters.
So what kind of God do you believe in? The limited, bumbling God of death and suffering, the incompetent 'sloppy manufacturer' peddled by evolutionary theists and progressive creationists or the all-powerful personal loving God Who called everything into existence in six literal days? The first one is an untrustworthy deity that cannot save you. The second one is the God of eternal life. Only He can resurrect the faithful unto eternal physical life in a physical paradise.
What will paradise be like? C.S. Lewis describes paradise as a place of matter, of weight and mass, and the blessed inhabitants in their resurrected bodies are the beautiful "bright solid people." N.T. Wright explains,
"...there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost....a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out...and put on...over the self that will still exist after bodily death." (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p. 154-155)
© Linda Kimball
March 15, 2014
Large numbers of people today believe that modern secular science has proven the earth and cosmos to be billions of years old, and that every living thing, from fish to dogs, apes and humans, evolved from a single cell which itself is the result of chance combination of chemicals. Most believe that primordial matter resulted from the Big Bang. Certain high profile Christians like Hugh Ross and the influential Evangelical theologians and scholars who support him, teach that God is both the energizing force behind the Big Bang and the director of evolutionary process.
Against this way of thinking, the Word of God authoritatively teaches a six day historical creation, which today is vastly unpopular with and downright offensive to scientifically enlightened theologians and their followers.
The rejection of the literal six day creation is an aberration of modernism, meaning liberal (pantheist) Protestantism and its' openly hostile 'secular' antitheist and atheist counterparts such as Marxist Communism and Secular Humanism.
Of the many early Church Fathers who wrote on Genesis, all but Augustine, who erred by teaching instantaneous creation, affirmed a literal, historic six day account of creation.
For instance, St. Cyril of Alexandria argued that higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to wrest and distort Genesis so as to conform it to Big Bang and other secular scientific assumptions is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
It's important that we understand that the Church Fathers weren't primitive, unscientific goat-herders as dishonest modernists have made them out to be, but rather highly intelligent, well-educated men. Many came from backgrounds of evolutionary pantheism, occultism and pagan animism thus were intimately familiar with much of what passes for contemporary secular science such as Big Bang and Steady State theories (evolutionary cosmogonies), inflationary models, vast ages, chance, the universal life force (serpent power, Zoë, evolution) and much more, even though by other designations.
Long before Darwin, Greek nature philosophers (600 – 100BC) were teaching primitive evolutionary conceptions, abiogenesis, chance, determinism, natural selection, transmigration, reincarnation and vast ages together with many other modern assumptions.
The fragments of Anaximander's (c. 610–546 BC) evolutionary speculations show he taught that 'humans originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish' while Democritus (c.460 – 370BC) taught that primitive people began to speak with 'confused' and 'unintelligible' sounds but 'gradually they articulated words.' (Evolution: An Ancient Pagan Idea, Paul James Griffith, creation.com)
The Greek Atomist Epicurus (341 – 270BC), the father of contemporary materialism and many of its' secular scientific assumptions, taught there was no need of a God or gods, for the Universe came about by a chance movement of atoms. (ibid)
Darwinism affirms the claim made by Epicurus that living beings created themselves, while modern evolutionary biology affirms Anaximander's claim that humans evolved from lower order life-forms.
With respect to old earth or vast ages, Plato and many other Greek philosophers taught that the present universe came about millions of years ago. Writing in the fourth century AD, Lactantius said:
"Plato and many others of the philosophers, since they were ignorant of the origin of all things, and of that primal period at which the world was made, said that many thousands of ages had passed since this beautiful arrangement of the world was completed ... ." (ibid)
After the Greeks, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder (AD23 – 79) said we are so subject to chance,
"....that Chance herself takes the place of God; she proves that God is uncertain." (ibid)
Greek and Roman philosophers received these ideas from ancient Sumerians (Babylonians), Egyptians and Hindus whose Mysteries, nature philosophies and evolutionary cosmogonies extended back centuries before Greek and Roman civilization. For example, one Hindu belief was that Brahman (the Void or Universe) spontaneously generated itself (the modern theory of abiogenesis) as something like a seed or singularity (Cosmic Egg or Big Bang) about 4.3 billion years ago and then evolved under its' own power by which it expanded and formed all that exists:
"These Hindus believed in an eternal Universe that had cycles of rebirth, destruction and dormancy, known as 'kalpas,' rather like oscillating big bang theories. We also read in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita that the god Krishna says, 'I am the source from which all creatures evolve." (ibid, Griffith)
In India the doctrines of evolution/reincarnation/karma were thoroughly established from ancient times. They were expounded first in the Upanishads (c. 1000 BC – AD 4), the philosophical-mystical texts held to be the essence of the Vedas.
Representing the young earth view and resurrection of the dead (Acts 17: 16-34) the Apostle Paul contended against the Greek Epicureans (materialists) and Stoics (pantheists), representatives of Cosmic Egg theories (Big Bang), vast ages (old earth view), universal life force (evolution), void, atoms, animism (i.e. Karl Marx's animated 'divine thinking' matter), fate, determinism, and reabsorption after death.
Speaking to the nature sages, Paul said "this is what I'm going to proclaim to you,"
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth... he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead."
When Greek sages heard about the resurrection of the dead, many of them sneered due to their belief that the body is a rotting tomb within which their souls were trapped. Since they believed that the fall consisted of an inexplicable plunge from being as one with the impersonal One Substance, then salvation was reabsorption of soul into the One Substance, therefore the idea of bodily resurrection was repulsive. In "Adversus nationes" (2:37) Arnobius complains,
"If souls were of the Lord's race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine." (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
The framework behind the way of thinking which Paul contended against is naturalism, the ancient idea that living beings make themselves. Naturalism is like a leopard, meaning its' spots cannot be changed even by defiant Scriptural retrofitters like Teilhard de Chardin, Leonard Sweet, Hugh Ross and other natural science and evolution compromisers.
As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. What once was will be again. In this light, when Peter prophesied about the "scoffers" in "the last days" who claim that "everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation" (2 Peter 3:4) he is speaking of this generation of God-haters and theological compromisers, who being wise in their own wisdom, willingly reject the Authority of God and six day special creation in preference of ancient ways of thinking revised and revamped for our own age.
The real issue behind objections to literal six day special creation is what kind of God progressive creationists and evolutionary theists believe in and peddle to unsuspecting believers. This is a question that needs to be addressed because by espousing Big Bang and old earth views theological compromisers have elevated naturalism in the guise of secular science and evolution above the Word and Authority of God resulting in an upside-down exegesis consisting of abundant mind-boggling inconsistencies.
Their inverted creation account is in the claim of a six day creation that occurred at the end of billions of years of evolutionary process. Logically, this means that billions of creatures lived and died long before man arrived on the scene, making the Word (John 1:1), our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the cause of death and suffering rather than the fall of Adam. By making the fossil record the measure of a sequence of long ages, God becomes the cause of death and suffering because the history of life appears to be a record of ineptitude, extinctions and constant brutality for billions of years. In the words of the atheist astronomer and evolution promoter Carl Sagan (1934-1996), if God,
"....is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why is he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition." (Refuting Compromise, Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M., p. 220)
The Big Bang, old earth view also leads to a philosophy of moral relativism because if men were once something else, a genderless blob of matter and then later on lizards and even later still some kind of ape-like creature, then not only are we going to become something else – maybe divine supermen, god-men, super robots or cosmic beings – but nothing can be said about transgender, 'gay,' and lesbianism since all life forms ascended from a genderless blob of matter generated by the inexplicable explosion of a Cosmic Egg which may or may not involve a stumbling God shaped and molded by theologians who require Him to ignite the Big Bang.
With regard to soul/spirit, if life arose from chemicals and then billions of years later man evolved from lower life-forms, then his rational nature, his soul, differs not qualitatively but only quantitatively from the beasts. Like beasts, man is not a person but a creature of the earth. Like them he has no spirit – free will, higher mental faculties, and conscience. He is a fleshy androgynous robot or hominid whose brain is organized by the genome and the genome shaped by natural selection.
Dr. Sarfati argues that denial of the literal and historic meaning of Genesis (young earth view) is foundationally the result of 'imposing outside ideas upon the Bible.' Thus, it has 'baneful consequences which don't just stop with Genesis,' but adversely affect many areas. The atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically agrees:
"The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a savior. And I submit that puts Jesus...into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity." ("Atheism vs. Christianity," 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. Belief in a six day creation period about 6,000 years ago has been the authoritative teaching of the Church for most of its history and is essential for consistency in doctrine and apologetics. Only with a firm, unshakable foundation in Genesis are Christians able to stand strong in their faith.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God..." "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1: 1-2, 14
"Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." John 8:58 & 17:5
If God is really Who He said He is, if He is the God Who revealed Himself to man through Jesus Christ (Messiah), then He can call everything into existence in six literal days (Gen. 1), bring about a virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23), be both God and man (Gen. 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Zechariah 12:10 & 13:7; 1 Chron. 17:1014), remove the curse due to Adam's fall (Gen 5:21-29), resurrect Himself from the dead and ascend unto Heaven (1 Pet. 1:3; Romans 1:4; Matthew 27:53) because for the Word Who became flesh, all of these things are very simple matters.
So what kind of God do you believe in? The limited, bumbling God of death and suffering, the incompetent 'sloppy manufacturer' peddled by evolutionary theists and progressive creationists or the all-powerful personal loving God Who called everything into existence in six literal days? The first one is an untrustworthy deity that cannot save you. The second one is the God of eternal life. Only He can resurrect the faithful unto eternal physical life in a physical paradise.
What will paradise be like? C.S. Lewis describes paradise as a place of matter, of weight and mass, and the blessed inhabitants in their resurrected bodies are the beautiful "bright solid people." N.T. Wright explains,
"...there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost....a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out...and put on...over the self that will still exist after bodily death." (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p. 154-155)
© Linda Kimball
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