INTRODUCTION:

We are living in a time of perhaps unmatched Biblical ignorance ­ a general lack of Biblical understanding. Many professing Christian pastors and leaders have given in to the culture and attempt to defend or reason without resorting to God’s Word, (or not at all).

1­ They are abandoning our most powerful weapon ­ God’s Holy Word! They have capitulated to the culture on the issue of Creation.They have capitulated to the culture on the basis that science (so called) has now “established that God did not “create the Heavens and the earth and all that is therein in six days and rested on the seventh”.

2­ They have capitulated to the culture on the issue of The Truth of God's Holy Word! They have capitulated, the ungodly myth of evolution over millions and billions of years and many are constantly defending the indefensible Darwinian Theory of origin of species and evolution, in the light of real scientific discoveries that reveal the falsity of the theory of evolution!

3­ Even where they profess Christ there is almost no call to “live as becomes the Gospel of Christ”; no call to repent and surrender one’s will to God’s will; and no call to be “doers of the Word and not merely hearers”! 

This devotional will take a brief look at each of these three points and see how these positions are undermining God’s Word.

I.          CREATION:

●    The history of Creation by the only One who was present states in Genesis 1:1 the following:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

There are some who say that between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 millions or billions of years elapsed (i.e. The Gap). Not only is this not recorded in scripture, such a position DEFIES scripture and logic. It is recorded in the second Chapter of Genesis that “Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished, and on the seventh day God ended his work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done”. (Genesis 2:1­2)

Many other passages of scripture affirm the six days of Creation. For example, in Exodus

Chapter twenty Moses received these words from the Lord God on Mount Sinai, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it Holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of The Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore The Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” (Exodus 20:8­11) See also Exodus 31:12­17, where He concludes speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai with these words regarding  the Sabbath day, “It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever: for in six days The Lord made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.” (Genesis 31:17) The Psalm, 104, praises the

Sovereign Lord for His creation and for His Divine Providence.

Jesus declares that “....from the beginning of the Creation, God made them male and female. “ (Mark 10:6) To the same effect in Matthew 19:4, thus Jesus destroys the argument that there are millions/billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 by simply stating that God created Adam and Eve “from the beginning”.  Perhaps the leading atheist/evolutionist, Richard Dawkings, says, “Evolution is not compatible with the Bible”. Of course his position is to throw out the Bible.

        ●    The DNA Code

The discovery of the DNA Code and what many scientists have learned about it

leave no chance that Darwin’s theories are true! Our experience and history show that codes are invented only by intelligence ­ not some natural process as a result of chance. Consider the Morse Code of Communication or even Braille for the blind. The German Naval Codes in World War II required an “enigma machine” to break them and when England obtained the “enigma machine” from Poland just before Germany invaded Poland, England was able to decipher the German orders almost before the Germans could! Clearly these codes were a product of a designed creation. Dr. Walter Brown (Walt Brown, In the Beginning) also speaks of the “genetic material that controls the physical processes of life” as “code information”. (Brown page 19)

Dr. Stephen Meyer in his work on DNA has written in his book Signature in the Cell, of the probability of “producing a single 150­amino­acid functional protein by chance stand at about one in ten to the 164th power.” This is more than the maximum number of opportunities “that any particular event would have to take place since the origin of the universe, which,” which is one in ten to the 140th power and Meyer points out “for the event to occur in the history of the universe the first number would exceed the second number by ….roughly a trillion trillion times” ­No CHANCE­.

“The calculations presented in the previous section meet both of these conditions. DNA and proteins manifest functionally significant patterns. And, given all the probabilistic resources of the universe, the odds of producing a functional protein of modest length stands less that one chance in a trillion trillion.” (Meyer pg. 219) “And beyond that, of course, the odds of producing the suite of proteins necessary to service a minimally complex cell by chance, in ten to the 41,000th power ­ completely dwarfs the probabilistic resources of the whole universe, taking all those resources ­ ten to the 140th power possible events­ into account only increases the probability of producing a minimally complex cell by chance alone to, at best, one chance in ten to the 40,861st power, again unimaginably small probability.” (Meyer pg 219)

Even Carl Sagan, an atheist, showed, using straightforward calculations, why one cell’s worth of genetic information approximates 4000 books of printed information. Each of Sagan’s 4000 books had 500 pages with 300 words per page [see Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden­ New York Random House, 1977 page 25] [Walt Brown, PhD, In The Beginning ­ compelling evidence for creation and the Flood pg. 75]

Brown points out that “the moon is 240,000 miles from earth. If the DNA in a human cell were stretched out and connected, it would be more than 7 feet long. If all the DNA in one person’s body were placed end to end, it would extend to the moon 552,000 times”. (Brown pg. 75)

Thus, even a brief look at the science that is currently available renders the Darwinian theory of evolution completely without a chance. God created the heavens and the earth by design, by His Word, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

II.        THE TRUTH OF GOD’S HOLY WORD:

“God declares that He is not a man that He can lie. Jesus, God the Son, states that He (the

Living Word who became flesh) is Truth. (John 14:6) He also says that “Thy Word (the Father’s

Word) is Truth.” (John 17:17) See also Psalms 119:142 and Psalms 119:160

When Satan attacked Eve in the Garden (Genesis 3), he attacked the Word of God and said that God was lying to Eve and Adam. It is the same attack that is going on today regarding God’s Word and many professing Christians are falling into the trap and helping the Evil One by saying that God did not create in six days because science has shown that the universe is 14.5 billion years old (give or take a few billion). They say that there are galaxies that are 14.5 billion light years away, therefore it took that long to create. Those who are duped into these positions fail to realize that God “set the stars (galaxies) in their courses when He created them”. (Psalms 8) Indeed, when Eve was created for Adam to be a “helper comparable to him” (Genesis 2), He made a woman (not a baby) and He brought her to Adam. When Eve was one minute old she was a woman and Adam took one look at Eve and celebrated! He did not say “Oh no. Now I’m going to have to change diapers.” She was his helper. “Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh”. His companion. When Jesus changed water into wine, it was the finest wine one second after being created. When God created the heavens they had position and appearance of age. After Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the rocks created from the eruption have been carbon dated at hundreds of thousands of years even though at the time they were measured they were less than twenty years old.

                                    Finally, the fossil record, which is available to everyone, shows the very evidence one would expect to see from a global flood. “Fossils all over the world show evidence of rapid burial” (Brown, pg. 11), not hundreds of millions of years. God’s Word is TRUE and “righteous all together”.

III.       THE CALL TO RECEIVE CHRIST:

                                    Jesus called all who would, to “come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light”. (Matthew 11:28-30) To “as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to be the children of God, even to them who believe on His name, who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”. (John 1:12-13)

                                    Note that the call is to “come” unto Christ. The gift is “rest”, and it is not hard- it is “easy”! This is the “rest” that God gives to His people. But one cannot just “say” they are coming, nor just “say” they believe in Jesus. They must come to Him. They do this by surrendering their will to the Lord’s will in true repentance and placing their trust in Jesus alone for their salvation, not trusting in their own record, which is what everyone needs saving from- their own record.

That is what is involved in taking Jesus’ yoke upon them. That’s repentance. I’m giving up my will and becoming yoked to Jesus. Where He leads me, I will go too. If I’m yoked to Him, I’m going where He goes. I am also to learn of Him. That takes study. He came not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him. He is “meek and lowly in heart” and I become His “bond-servant” and God makes me an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ. We too can say as the hymn writer, “Make me a prisoner Lord and then I shall be free; Force me to render up my sword and then a conqueror shall I be; I sink in Life’s alarms when by myself I stand; Imprison me within Thine arms, and strong shall by my hand.”

He tells us that He came to seek and to save that which is lost and to give His life a ransom for many. He told those who would not come that “you will not come unto Me, that you may have life.” It is the gift of eternal life that is everlasting that He gives to those who come. Clearly then one does not receive “rest” or “everlasting life” by believing in the six days of Creation, but those who are attacking God’s Word as untrue on this or any other point are undermining God’s Word, and willingly, or unwillingly, doing the work of the enemy of the Cross of Christ. The result is many have stumbled and do not come to Christ.

                                    Because salvation is all of God’s sovereign grace, i.e. a sheer gift, no one should ever fear that they cannot come because they have sinned too much or too badly, or are not “good enough”. Come unto Christ! Take His yoke upon you. Learn of Him. Ask God to shed His grace on you (and your children and grandchildren). He will give you rest, for His Word is True! Then seek to “live as becomes the Gospel of Christ”. Do not be conformed to the world, don’t look-like the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind in Christ Jesus.

CONCLUSION:

                                    Thus, as Jehovah God said through the prophet Isaiah more than 2700 years ago, “My children do not know. They do not consider! I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me.” Biblical ignorance is what we are seeing again in our day. The answer God gave then is again relevant. “Come now, let us reason together sayeth The Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” The Blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin! Think about it. Tell everyone you care about, of Jesus who is mighty to save. He came to seek and to save the lost. He came not to condemn the world, nut that the world through Him might be saved. Why should any perish? Only those who will not come to Him that they might have life. Come to Jesus. Take His yoke upon you and learn of Him. Dare to be a Daniel. Dare to stand alone. Dare to have a purpose firm. Dare to make it known. Purpose in your heart to live as becomes the Glorious Gospel of Christ. Let “Truth” be your worldview! God’s Word is Truth. Be sanctified by it!

                                    “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you[d] what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:20-12)

Your Brother In Christ,

Bill Gray