Trusting the Ultimate Eyewitness
From Issue:
Discovery – July 2022
Do you recall what God said to Job when He spoke to him (near the end of the book of Job)? The Lord said:
“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?… Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.” Job 38:2,4
In response to these questions, Job confessed:
“I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Job 42:3
Human beings certainly can know that God exists, even without having the Bible to tell us. The physical, created Universe demands a Creator. Complex, functional design in nature demands an ultimate Designer. As Paul wrote, God’s “invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1:20). Or, as King David stated, the heavens demand a heavenly Maker (Psalm 19:1-4). Logically speaking, there must be a Builder of the physical realm (Hebrews 3:4).
However, one thing that everyone should confess is that, since no human beings were alive to see the Creation of the Universe (and “the foundations of the earth” being laid), the only way we can know any details about Creation is if the Creator chose to reveal them to us. For example, “How long did God take to create the Universe?” “Did He make a mature creation, or a ‘baby’ creation (with only seeds, eggs, and infants)?” And, “What did God create first, second, third, etc.?”
A second thing we must confess about the past is that, since the lone human survivors of the Genesis Flood were the eight souls in the ark, the only way we can know with certainty some of the specific details of the Flood is if God chose to reveal those details to us. For example, “Was it really a global flood?” And, “Was it a calm, gradual rising of the waters which allowed people and land-living creatures to survive? Or, did ‘all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, die’—all people, land animals, and birds?”
Atheistic evolutionists say a lot of things about the Earth and the Universe that they simply do not know and cannot prove. They claim the Universe came from nothing. Yet, such a claim defies both logic and science. Even Dr. Richard Dawkins, arguably the most famous atheistic scientist in the world, admitted,
“Of course common sense doesn’t allow you to get something from nothing.”
Atheistic evolutionists contend that a tiny ball of matter exploded 13.8 billion years ago. Supposedly, this Big Bang led to our current Universe. Some claim to “know” these things, and that this “is exactly what happened at the start of the Universe.” Yet, no evolutionist (nor creationist) was present at the very start of the Universe. The only way we could know “what” happened (and “when”) is if someone was there to witness the beginning and tell us what happened.
Was anyone in existence “in the beginning”? Absolutely!
“In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” John 1:1-3
Did the eternal One (Isaiah 9:6) Who created all things have anything to say about the foundations of the Universe? He certainly did. In various places throughout the Bible He talks about His works of Creation (Genesis 1-2; Exodus 20:11; Psalm 33:6,9), and His eyewitness details are the opposite of what the man-made-up theories of cosmic and biological evolution teach.
Atheistic evolutionists contend that all life evolved from non-life and that the first life evolved into all the different forms of life we see on Earth today—that we all go back to a common ancestor. Once again, this teaching is merely an unproven story by evolutionists. No one was there to witness life come from non-life, nor a “common ancestor” evolve into fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and humans. What’s more, the scientific Law of Biogenesis contradicts this godless theory. “In nature, all life comes from previous life of its own kind.”
So what actually happened at the beginning with life? The eternal Creator revealed in Genesis 1 that He supernaturally created the various forms of life on Earth “according to their kind” (Genesis 1:21) on days three, five, and six of Creation. These various kinds of life were also able to reproduce after their own kind since their “seed is in itself according to its kind” (Genesis 1:12). That is, a peach tree produces peaches with peach seeds, which can then grow into more peach trees. Chickens lay only eggs that produce more chickens.
Notice: God said what He did, and what we see through “a study of the natural realm” (“science”) is perfectly consistent with God’s statements about Creation.
But don’t the rocks of the Earth show evolution to be true? Are they not dated by scientists as being billions of years old? Actually, no human being has ever proven the Earth’s rocks are millions or billions of years old. In truth, all dating methods are based on unproven and unprovable assumptions.
“But if one element in a rock breaks down into another element over an extremely slow, long period of time, then surely we can know the ages of the rocks…and know they are millions or billions of years old.” Not true. As we have discussed in other issues of Discovery, a person would have to assume
- the rate of decay has always been the same,
- the elements have not been affected by outside forces,
- no “daughter element” existed at the beginning.
Furthermore, different dating methods often give vastly different, contradictory ages for the same rock sample. Obviously, such dating methods can never give us an actual age of Earth’s rocks or the Earth itself.
“But surely there never was a worldwide Flood. Where is the evidence for such a catastrophe?” First, we have eyewitness testimony from God—Who (like at Creation) was “at” the global Flood and revealed various things that happened during the year-long event. Second, nothing on Earth (no real, scientific investigation) contradicts the Genesis Flood. And third, many scientific evidences point to the fact that the Flood happened (as we have discussed in other Discovery issues).
Who can be trusted when it comes to learning unmistakable truths about our distant past—about the beginning of the Universe and the later catastrophic Flood? Though we can learn many amazing things by observing the natural realm, some things about Creation and the history of the Earth can only be known as truths if the all-knowing Creator revealed them.
Thankfully, God revealed a number of amazing truths about our origins in Genesis—the book of beginnings. Not surprisingly, whenever the great “works of the Lord are…studied” (Psalm 111:2), an honest investigation of God’s natural world is always in harmony with God’s revealed Word. They never have and never will contradict each other.
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