Sermon Tone Analysis

The War Against God

begins — “Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker...”

In , we see the serpent

There is a war against God.

It is a rebellion against the Creator’s sovereign rule.

I want you to keep that in mind because that’s the setting of our considerations of the book of Genesis this morning.

That’s clear enough, right?

Either you believe it or not.

In the beginning — When? the beginning, the beginning of what is, the beginning of everything.

God —

How do you know?

How does anyone know?

What we need to understand is that we’re talking about the beginning — “In the beginning...”

How do you know what you know?

You must have knowledge.

But understand that the statement concerns the beginning — “In the beginning...”

Think about this.

The Beginning.

We’re not talking about the beginning of this day or this week.

We’re not talking about the beginning of August, that was only a few days ago.

We’re not talking even about the beginning of the year.

We’re not talking about the beginning of the 21st century.

We’re not talking about the beginning of this country.

We’re talking the beginning of the beginning.

How do you know what was “in the beginning” of all things?

You can only know if someone were there.

And there was someone and we’re told — GOD!

And God said.

He spoke and it happened.

But there’s a war against the only eyewitness to the beginning.

And listen, God is more than an eyewitness — He’s the Originator of all things.

He’s the Creator.

Let’s talk about this war.

But let me draw out the battleground.

It’s not really the secularists or the evolutionist that are the problem.

We know their issue.

We know they don’t want God.

It’s in the church.

It’s in the church.

I.

It questions the Authority of the Word of God.

A study was done by Answers in Genesis in which that asked the question — “Would you consider yourself to be a Young-Earth or Old-Earth Christian?

Naturalism is the view that every law and every force operating in the universe is natural rather than moral, spiritual, or supernatural.

Naturalism is inherently antiTheistic and rejects the concept of a personal God.

The proponents of naturalism like to say naturalism is the very essence of scientific objectivity, that their system stands on pure scientific facts and not on blind faith.

Take for example Carl Sagan, probably the best known scientific celebrity of the past few decades.

He was a renowned astronomer and overtly antagonistic to God.

He believed everything in the universe has a natural cause and a natural explanation.

He looked at the universe, saw its greatness, and concluded nothing could possibly be greater.

“The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”

Sagan’s view of the universe was actually a kind of naturalistic pantheism.

His worldview was evolution.

And Sagan helped the concept of evolution extend into every aspect of life.

We generally think of evolution in biology, geology, and astronomy, but it permeates every area of our lives.

Julian Huxley stresses the influence of evolution:

Inorganic subjects such as the life-history of stars and the formation of the chemical elements on the one hand, and on the other hand subjects like linguistics, social anthropology, and comparative law and religion, began to be studied from an evolutionary angle, until today we are enabled to see evolution as a universal and all-pervading process.

Ernst Mayr, Harvard scientist, wrote:

I’m taking a new look at the Darwinian revolution of 1859, perhaps the most fundamental of all intellectual revolutions in the history of mankind.

It not only eliminated man’s anthropocentrism, but affected every metaphysical and ethical concept, if consistently applied.

Listen to this quote from one of the nation’s top ecologists:

Most enlightened persons now accept as a fact that everything in the cosmos — from heavenly bodies to human beings — has developed and continues to develop through evolutionary processes.

The great religions of the West have come to accept a historical view of creation.

Evolutionary concepts are applied also to social institutions and to the arts.

Indeed, most political parties, as well as schools of theology, sociology, history, or arts, teach these concepts and make them the basis of their doctrines.

Most evident of this battle today on all fronts is seen from theistic evolutionist, and paleontologist, the Roman Catholic priest, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin:

“Evolution is general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must hence forward BOW and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true.

Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow.

Evolution is not merely a biological theory.

It is a worldview diametrically opposed to God.

(And they asked this question to the President, the Vice-President, the Science Department head and the Religious Department head of fairly conservative and mainline Christian Colleges and Seminaries).

Evolution permeates the Life Sciences

The majority considered themselves Old-Earth.

Most scientist believe that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

“We know evolution is true, even though we don’t know how it works, and have never seen it happen!”

When they divided it up between the Religion Department and the Science Department, what they found was

Evolution permeates Origin and History of the Earth Sciences

Nearly 78% in the Religious department believed in an Old-Earth, nearly 15% believed in a Young-Earth.

Geology, archaeology, paleontology, etc. insists on several billion year old earth all based on a number of unprovable assumptions first posited by Charles Lyell, the father of historical geology.

Nearly 35% in the Science department believed in an Old-Earth and 57% believed in Young-Earth.

S.M. Stanley, leading paleontologist of John Hopkins writes:

What’s absolutely incredible to me is that from this data, in Christian colleges and Seminaries, the Science department is more likely to believe the account of creation in Genesis than the Religious Department.

“The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphological transition.”

BUT! Wait a minute!

Does it really matter if we believe the Genesis account of creation as it is written?

The study of biology shows no evidence whatever of evolution occuring in the present, and the study of geology and paleontology show no evidence that it ever occured in the past.

And that’s a good question, it’s just not the right question.

Evolution permeates the Physical Sciences

THE RIGHT QUESTION IS:

Does it really matter if we believe what God said?

Physics, chemistry, and astronomy scientists have developed fantastic explanation in support of evolution of the universe, the elements, the stellar heavens, complex molecules, and life.

As Steven Wienberg, leading astrophysicist admits:

You see, because it’s a question of Authority.

It’s a question of Authority.

The Bible tells us one thing about origin and secular evolutionists tells us something completely different.

“It is a bit disturbing that all these estimates of the ages and compositions of the stars rest on elaborate calculations of what is going on inside them, but all that we observe is that light emitted from their surfaces.”

The Bible tells us God created everything in 6 days.

Secular evolutionists tell us everything evolved over millions and billions of years.

Let’s look at this for a moment.

Secular Evolutionists

Listen — the secularist and evolutionist would have us believe in the process of evolution, but they can’t prove it.