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Category: Spiritual/Religion
Description: Many believers don't realize that the Bible contains principles that equip them to have a Christian world-and-life view. This book explores the world-and-life view by considering the main spheres of influence that Christians should be working to strengthen: the world, humanity, the nation, the school, the church, and the family.
eBook Publisher: Crossway Books, 2009
eBookwise Release Date: June 2009

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [555 KB]
Words: 116753
Reading time: 333-467 min.

Recently I preached a sermon called "The Root of the Problem," and my wife asked me the day before, after hearing the message title, "So, what is it?"

I replied, "What do you think it is?"

She said, "Why, sin, of course."

My wife is a very perceptive lady, and I said, "Honey, that's right. If you go to the etiology of mankind's whole problem, eventually you get back to sin."

But I was also thinking of something more recent, a more modern human construct that is indeed the root of nearly all of the problems we face today, in fact for the last century and a half. It would be interesting to have all of you readers guess your answer. I'm sure some of you would get it right. I fear others of you would not.

I also think that when I tell you what I think it is, many of you will not believe me. I trust that before we finish this chapter, you will see why I say what I do. The root of the problem of most of the great ills that have afflicted society and do afflict it today are caused by the teaching of evolution. It has been called "The Big Lie." It has deceived hundreds of millions of people and has probably brought about more deaths than any other view in the history of the world.

EVOLUTION

Evolution simply says that the whole universe is made up of nothing but matter; that matter, time, and chance--the trinity of materialism--have brought all things into existence that exist. Therefore, there is no God. One scientist (John Lenczowski) said he was confident that if you interviewed social scientists at our elite universities across the country, and if they were willing to be honest about the matter, you would find out something surprising. He said you would find that perhaps 99 percent of them would not be willing to sign the Declaration of Independence.[1]

[Footnote 1: John Lenczowski, "The Treason of the Intellectuals: Higher Education, the Culture War and the Threat to U.S. National Security," Policy Counsel (Fall 1996), 45.]

Why? They do not believe in a Creator; they do not believe we have been created equal or any other way. They do not believe that we have been endowed with certain inalienable rights by this Creator. They believe none of that, and if they were honest, they would not sign the document that made us Americans.

He says, "Parents can work hard to educate their children to be patriots and morally upright citizens. But four years of college of the kind I experienced--where I was surrounded by a culture of drugs, sexual libertinism, political radicalism and little homework--can destroy the efforts of the best parents in America."

If that doesn't do it, he says, a couple of years of graduate school are almost certain to destroy any vestige of belief in God, moral absolutes, morality, Americanism, patriotism, or any other of our values. That is due to evolution. Evolution has made our public schools and universities and colleges like the one he attended a mortal danger to the lives and souls of young people--with tragic consequences.

Dr. Ernest Gordon, dean emeritus of the Princeton University Chapel, also the hero and author of the book Bridge Over the River Kwai, is a fascinating and godly man. (Unfortunately, the movie totally ignored the Christian aspects of the story.) Anyway, Dr. Gordon said:

During the late [1950s] I was invited to address the senior class of an English department in a city high school. When I arrived at the school, I introduced myself to the assistant headmaster, whose office was at the entrance. He guided me to the appropriate lecture hall.

Twenty years later, I was invited to the same school for the same purpose. I again presented myself to the same office, but it was no longer the habitat of an educator. It was the command post of a police inspector. Corridors and classrooms were monitored by police officers who reported regularly to the inspector. The reasons for the change were obvious: violence, assault, rape, drug-induced madness.

I interpret this scene as evidence of the end times of a civilization that had once benefited from the Christian worldview, one that exalted creation and people and provided ideals essential for an authentic education. I recognize that civilization does not create Christians. However, the community of faith created and still creates the civility that is evidence of civilization. The demoralized school is the tragic consequence of society's rejection of the biblical worldview that provided the intellectual dynamic of Western education.[2]

[Footnote 2: Ernest Gordon, et al., "Is Baer Right?" Christianity Today, February 17, 1984, 18.]

At the heart of all that is the doctrine of evolution that, first of all, got rid of God--since there is no Creator, there is no God. Since evolutionists believe that all life arose spontaneously from matter, there was no need for a God to create anyone.

Another of the fruits of evolution has been the proliferation of atheists. Do you realize that before Darwin, an atheist was as scarce as a hen's tooth? Oh, there were a few around, but very, very few. Do you know why? Because if you said you were an atheist, all I had to say to you was, "Look around, buddy. Where did all of this come from?"

And the atheist would say, "Ah ... bu ... da ... I don't know."

Then came Charles Darwin. One evolutionist said, "The greatest contribution of Charles Darwin was that he made atheism respectable." For that, this atheistic evolutionist was forever grateful--or at least for whatever few years he had left in this world, until the day of the Great Judgment, which will come for all of us.

So evolution got rid of God, or at least thought it did. Does this make any difference in our current society? Yes, it does. I was talking to an expert in legal affairs who has often appeared before the Supreme Court, and he told me that the main problem in the Supreme Court is very simple: Six of the judges are evolutionists, and three are not. Have you wondered why they vote the way they do when it comes time to decide:

+ whether or not God should be taught in the classrooms? No.

+ whether or not prayer should be directed to God? Nope.

+ whether or not the Bible should be taught? No way.

+ whether or not the Ten Commandments can be posted in a public classroom? We cannot have that.

+ whether or not it is legal to abort a child? Of course.

+ whether or not it is legal for a man to marry a man and a woman a woman? Some of the courts of this land have accepted same-sex marriage.

If there is no God, there are no moral absolutes. As an evil, atheistic character in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov says, "everything is permitted ... since there is no infinite God, there's no such thing as virtue either and there's no need for it at all."[3] Think about it. That statement is true.

[Footnote 3 : Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Andrew H. MacAndrew (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1970), Book XI, Chapter 8, 760.]

Because of evolution, man has lost his significance. In Western civilization, it has always been held that man is a creature with a great purpose, He has been created in the image of God to fulfill His purposes in this world, and he has an everlasting life ahead of him. But now...

THE IMPACT OF DECISIONS

Indeed, we have seen in the courts in the past four decades four very significant decisions that have ushered us into this secular apocalypse. First of all, the Supreme Court ruled prayer out of our schools. Then they ruled the Bible out of schools. Next they ruled the Ten Commandments out of the schools. Now they have voted against the balanced treatment of creation along with evolution in the schools. So we have seen banished from the thought of our young people the idea that they have been created by anyone or that there are any laws or moral absolutes they should obey. By the way, the Supreme Court's decision against allowing the Ten Commandments to be posted on the walls of the schools in Kentucky, said, "...lest looking upon them from day to day, the students should be moved to obey them."[4]

[Footnote 4: Justice William Brennan, for the majority, U.S. Supreme Court, Stone v. Graham, 1980.]

If there is no Judge, then there is no one to whom we are accountable or responsible. Therefore, if God is dead or absent from both ends of the process of life, then it is true that, as the Dostoevsky character said, "Anything is permissible." And that is one of the basic motivations that lies behind the belief in evolutionism.

NO PURPOSE

Today students are taught that man has no purpose, because teleology, the science of purposes, is the bête noire, the black beast, of evolution. Evolutionists cannot stand for anything to have purpose. Teleology must go. Therefore, everything is not preplanned by a divine intelligence and a beneficent God who providentially provides for His creatures. It all happens purely by chance, with no forethought of what the end might be. Therefore man has no purpose; consequently he has no significance.

"ACCIDENTAL TWIG"

Stephen J. Gould was the most influential evolutionist in America, a professor at Harvard University for twenty years--and then he had a great awakening: He died recently, and he met the Creator face-to-face. That must have been a horribly shocking event, to say the least. Overnight he became a creationist.

However, in one article by him he said: "Man--or even woman--as the crowning achievement of some grand cosmic plan? What mortal conceit." To Gould the idea of the creation of man was merely a mortal conceit. "We are but an afterthought," said Gould. "We are a little accidental twig"[5]--the kind you would pick up off the lawn of your backyard and throw into the garbage. That is what our students are learning in our colleges: They are nothing but dried-up, little accidental twigs of no significance and no purpose.

[Footnote 5: Elizabeth Mehren, "Humans a Mere Afterthought, Evolutionist Says," The Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 17, 1989.]

So man lost all of his divinely bestowed significance and importance with the onslaught of evolution. The results of that have been staggering. Among them is the fact that suicide is the second largest cause of death among college students in America. As of this writing, there has been a rash of suicides at the very place I earned my Ph. D., New York University. When life has no meaning or purpose and no future, then why not? Tune out. Tune in. Live a life of drugs, alcohol, sex. Life really doesn't have any meaning after all, because it has been "demonstrated scientifically" that evolution is a "fact," and you have to get used to it. Students are told it is a fact that is believed by all scientists. How many times have we heard that?

WHY WAS EVOLUTION ACCEPTED SO READILY?

I remember listening a few years ago to a television broadcast on public television in which a young lady was interviewing Sir Julian Huxley. He was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, who popularized evolution during Darwin's day. Darwin was too meek and mild to get out and defend his own theory, but he had a bulldog, Thomas Huxley. His grandson was Sir Julian, and he was, a few years ago, the most important evolutionist in the world--even knighted by the king. He was also the president and founder of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). He was a world ambassador for evolution. If Sir Julian spoke, that was the law, the last word. The lady interviewing him asked, "Why do you think evolution caught on so quickly? Why do you think the scientists leaped at The Origin of Species?"

I remember exactly where I was sitting while watching this public broadcasting television station and Huxley's response, verbatim. The greatest living evolutionist in all of the world, Sir Julian Huxley, said, "We all jumped at the Origin because..." I would love to ask a college class of seniors in the science department that question: "Why did scientists leap at the Origin?"

They would say that Charles Darwin presented such unimpeachable evidence that proved the fact of evolution that we, in our scientific integrity, could not help but accept his conclusions. That is what virtually every student in our public schools is taught. But what did the greatest evolutionist on earth, Sir Julian Huxley, say? He said this: "[I suppose the reason] we all jumped at the Origin was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores." Remember: If there is no God, everything is permissible.

By the way, that is not a lone opinion. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and the brother of Julian, was one of the great agnostic evolutionists of the twentieth century, also following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Thomas Huxley. He said the same thing. He believed in the meaninglessness of the world, which Darwin taught, because, he said, "We objected to the morality, because it interfered with our sexual freedom."

Such statements from various highly placed evolutionists could be quoted. What was evolution really all about? Science? Evidence? ... No. Sex. It unleashed The Kinsey Report, the sexual revolution, feminism, divorce, homosexuality, and all of the rest of those ills. Does evolution really make a difference in our world? Believe me, it does. The people I am quoting to you are not merely evolutionists--they are the world's greatest evolutionists, and what they often say to each other, they don't say to the public.

I further will say that 95 percent of what you read here, you have never read in the newspaper. They will say, "But evolution is a fact, and therefore we must live with it, adjust to it." That is what many people have tried to do because they have been told it is a fact. It's not a theory, we are told--it is a fact.

NOT A FACT

But in truth, evolution is not a fact; it isn't even a scientific theory. Evolutionists say, "Evolution is not a theory; it's a fact." However, the greatest authority in the world says it's not a theory, it's not even a hypothesis, it's metaphysics. It's basically theology. We will focus in a later chapter on how evolution is crumbling in our time.

Others will say, "All scientists believe in evolution, and therefore we must believe it." I would say the most persuasive argument used in our colleges and high schools as to why students ought to believe in evolution is that all scientists believe it. You have probably heard that statement made. There's just one problem...

IT' S NONSENSE

In actuality, evolution has failed at every point. All of the major pillars of evolution have collapsed in the last twenty years. For example, the idea that the amazing and almost unbelievable complexity of a cell could have risen by chance. Sir Fred Hoyle, of Cambridge University and Oxford, one of the greatest living astronomers, developer of the Steady-State theory of creation, said that the idea that a cell could have risen by chance "is evidently nonsense of a high order."[6]

[Footnote 6: Fred Hoyle, The Big Bang in Astronomy, 527, quoted in Henry M. Morris, Evolution in Turmoil: An Updated Sequel to the Troubled Waters of Evolution (San Diego, CA: Creation-Life Publishers, 1982), 29.]

What children are being taught in every public school as scientific fact in America is "nonsense of a high order." Yes, outstanding scientists have said there is no basis and no real evidence for evolution at all. It is not even a theory, much less a fact.

Hitler was a devout evolutionist and a follower of Nietzsche and Haeckel, and he taught evolution to his troops. He gave them a copy of Darwin's book and Nietzsche's book, which talked about evolution of the god-man, of our becoming God. He was absolutely determined to create a super race by getting rid of the inferior races.

For example, Hitler said, "At this point someone or other may laugh, but this planet once moved through the ether for millions of years without human beings and it can do so again some day if men forget that they owe their higher existence, not to the ideas of a few crazy ideologists, but to the knowledge and ruthless application of Nature's stern and rigid laws. Everything we admire on this earth today--science and art, technology and inventions--is only the creative product of a few people and originally perhaps of one race. On them depends the existence of this culture.... All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all higher humanity, and therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word 'man.'"[7] And so, because of his view of evolution, he believed the Aryan was superior to other races (including the Jews, the Gypsies, the Slavs, and so on).

[Footnote 7 : Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 288, 290, quoted in The Christian News (New Haven, MO), October 23, 1989, 11.]

Because of this, Hitler was adamant that Aryans should not breed with non-Aryans: "The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so, it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all."[8] So who are you, asks Hitler, to question the marvels of evolution? Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along. And millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it.

[Footnote 8 : Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. James Murphy, Chapter XI, "Race and People," gutenerg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601.txt.]

RACISM--AN EVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT

Racism is basically an evolutionary concept. The word race is never even used in the Bible, except for a foot race. But all of the nineteenth-century evolutionists were strong racists, including Darwin, who said that the inferior races at some time in the future would all be destroyed by the superior races. Hitler and others set out to do so. We also know that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, set out to get rid of "the human weeds," as she called them, so that the superior stock might prevail.

Also, you may know that Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, felt that evolution was exactly what he needed as a pseudo-scientific foundation for that Godless worldview. He even wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Charles Darwin. Darwin's wife had a fit, and Marx said he wouldn't do it because he didn't want to cause unhappiness in his family. Darwin also hoped his wife would let go of his nose. She was much more conservative than her husband, to say the least.

Communism is based upon evolution, as are Nazism and Fascism. The Communists have killed more people in peacetime than all those killed in all religious wars combined. According to The Black Book of Communism, "rough approximation, based on unofficial estimates" finds that the "total [killed by the Communists] approaches 100 million people killed."[9] The Communists killed, according to the Senate Committee of the United States of America, 135 million people in peacetime. They are the greatest mass murderers of all time--Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and all the rest--and all of that compliments of evolution. As a Dutch Marxist said in 1912, "If we turn to Marxism we immediately see a great conformity with Darwinism."[10]

[Footnote 9 : Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin, The Black Book of Communism, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999), 4.]

[Footnote 10: Anton Pannekoek, Marxism and Darwinism, trans. Nathan Weiser (Chicago: Charles H.Kerr & Company, 1909/1912); www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/works/1912-dar.htm. ]

Author Ian Taylor says that Fascism and Communism were two sides of the same coin in that evolution provided the basis for both--therefore human life was cheap. "Fascism or Marxism, right wing or left--all these are only ideological roads that lead to Aldous Huxley's brave new world, while the foundation for each of these is Darwin's theory of evolution.... The result is that both Fascism and Marxism finish at the same destiny--totalitarian rule by the elite."[11]

[Footnote 11: Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1984), 411.]

Therefore, we can conclude with a statement made by a very famous evolutionist, Sir Arthur Keith, at one time the number-one evolutionist in Great Britain. At the end of World War II Keith said that what we had just seen for the first time in history was a modern secular technological state that had based itself entirely upon the principles of evolution. He was horrified. He had written twenty books defending evolution, and then he saw it in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust--and he was appalled. Keith also said this:

Meantime, let me say in conclusion, I have come to this: The law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution ... as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed.[12]

[Footnote 12: Arthur Keith, Evolution and Ethics (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1947), 15.]

Again, this comes from Sir Arthur Keith, at one time a leading evolutionist in Great Britain.

CONCLUSION

Some are predicting that by the middle of this century, evolution will be known simply as a small religious sect of the twentieth century. Paul Lemoine, director of the National Museum of Natural History, was an atheist, but a critic of evolution nonetheless. He said, "Evolution is a kind of dogma which its own priests no longer believe, but which they uphold for the people."[13] Another Frenchman, Jean Rostand, a biologist and member of the Academy of Sciences of the French Academy, once wrote, "Evolution ["Transformism"] is a fairy tale for adults."[14]

[Footnote 13 : Paul Lemoine, Encyclopedie Francaise, 1950s, Vol. 5, quoted at www.talkorigins.org/ faqs/ce/3/part12.html.]

[Footnote 14: Jean Rostand, Age Nouveau (a French periodical), February 1959, 12, quoted in ibid.]

I pray that the Lord will topple this whole monstrous edifice, which has brought more death, more evil, more vice, more vileness into the world than any other human theory ever promulgated. I pray that the law of Christ will prevail and that this One who came and commanded us to care for the weak, not destroy them, to help those who are sick and the poor and not let them die, that His views will prevail, though they are the very antithesis of evolution. I pray that His love and mercy and grace will cover the world. I also pray that the collapse of this horrible edifice may come soon and may come completely and totally. I pray that the wondrous effects of Christ's ethical, moral, and spiritual teaching will once more prevail in our nation and in the world.