Sunday, February 3, 2019

THE CHRISTIAN EVOLUTIONIST - TAMPERING WITH THE SCRIPTURES




The Christian evolutionist (CE) degrades the Word of God insisting that it cannot be trusted when it speaks about the physical world. Instead, it can only be trusted when it talks about the spiritual. Specifically, the CE discounts the first several chapters of Genesis to remove whatever contradiction between evolution and the Bible, claiming that it is no more than a myth or parable.

However, it doesn’t stop there. When the foundation of the Bible is shaken, everything built upon it is also shaken. For example, the genealogies all indicate that Adam was the historical first man and that his sin brought death and corruption into the world. Even worse, according to the CE all of the NT references of Genesis accounts regard these as historically factual. For example, Jesus based His argument against divorce on the historical workings of God (Genesis 1 and 2):

               Matthew 19:4-6  He [Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [Gen. 1:26-27], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Gen. 2:24]! 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has [historically] joined together, let not man separate.”

Had God not historically performed these works, Jesus’ argument would have been without basis. Likewise, Peter based the certainty of the promised future judgment on God’s past historical judgments:

               2 Peter 2:4-6,9  For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;  if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly…then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

Paul also affirmed the historicity of the Genesis accounts of creation and the Fall:

               1 Corinthians 11:8-9   For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. (1 Cor. 15:21-22; 1 Timothy 2:11-13; Romans 5:12-19)

From these examples alone, it seems that the CE not only upsets Genesis but also the entirety of Biblical theology. Consequently, the CE is theologically confused. If they cannot accept the Bible’s testimony about the physical world, they will have difficulty accepting the Bible’s testimony about the spiritual world. If evolution and the scientific consensus is their gold standard to judge the Bible’s teachings about the physical world, it will also be the standard to judge its moral teachings.

Their misguided actions do not stop there. The CE also attempts to destroy the credibility of the Bible by charging that the Bible is wrong concerning what it teaches about the physical world. For instance, the CE alleges that the Psalmist had been influenced by the errant cosmology of his day when he wrote that the earth was fixed unmovably, presumably resting on a pedestal:

               Psalm 93:1  The Lord reigns, he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

However, the Psalmists also say the same thing about the righteous. Certainly, they didn’t believe that they too were stuck on a pedestal:

               Psalm 15:5  He who does not put out his money at usury, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved. (NKJV)

               Psalm 16:8  I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. (NKJV)

               Psalm 62:6  He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.

The CE has committed a serious error, which the Bible has warned against. They have degraded the Word of God by taking away from it:

               Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32  You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you.

John also warned against this same error:

               Revelation 22:18-19 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

The CE also “takes away” from the Scriptures and leads others to do so. Let us pray that they will repent of tampering with the Word of God.

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