We accept reality to be the physical world around us. Reality is that which we know through our five senses: touch, taste, smelling, hearing, and seeing. Webster says truth is “the quality of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality; conformity with fact,” also “a particular belief or teaching regarded by the speaker as the true one.” This adds the dimension of a spiritual reality.

However in the area of information, reports, and beliefs passed along by people we often discover deceptive and disappointing results. Claims that people make, recommendations, financial investments, and “news” often do not prove to be good or true. It has been said, in irony, that we should not believe anything we hear and only half of what we see. Cynicism is the result of increasing selfism, deception, and disinformation in society. Who can be trusted?

Where is Truth Found?

There are many voices calling for men’s attention today, saying, “Listen to me, I’m right,” “Here is salvation, health, or riches.” Other voices say, “This is the way to God, the gods, or perhaps to discover that we are gods.” How can we know who is right? With the demise of Christianity in the western world there is a growing new ecumenism. People conclude, “No one is perfect” and “everyone has some truth.” So let’s be receptive to everyone. Who can claim to have “the way”? This was the “open-minded” attitude of the Athenians who “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” Yet the majority rejected the “one way” that Paul taught (Acts 17:21-33).

There is a blind faith in the goodness of man, presuming that everyone wants to do right. They believe that no one is bad, everyone has some good, and the main thing is not to offend anyone. With the increase of militant spirits in our world from religions, criminals, environmentalists, down to children, the pressure is to yield to force. More and more the one who holds a standard is considered the offender.

However in the midst of this growing confusion and unbelief in the one true Jehovah God, truth can still be found by the truehearted. God has given a witness of Himself from Heaven and a witness in the earth, and they are in perfect harmony.

These two sources of truth we can be sure about today. They are what God has said and what He has done. This is found first in His revelation of Himself and in history. God?s Word or revelation is recorded in the Bible and His acts are also fixed in the archaeological deposits and geologic layers in the earth.

“Speak to the Earth, and it Shall Teach Thee” (Job 12:8)

About twenty years ago I was surprised to read the above passage from the Bible on a wall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It was on the fourth floor among the reconstructions of mammoths, sloth, dinosaurs, and other extinct fossil creatures found in the earth. I wished they would have also included what follows it in Job 12:8, 9: “Who knoweth not . . . that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this.” The exhibit has since been renovated and the Bible quote removed.

How do we speak to the earth? We study and see what is found there. Then we ask, “What is this? How and when did this happen?”

Job goes on to say, “Behold [look], he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again” (Job 12:14). This is archeology and the fallen cultures of history. Men and kingdoms construct the things that are built. When a society’s “cup of iniquity” is full, God brings them down and no man can save them (Psalm 78:6 8). America will also fall unless righteousness and godly lifestyles return.

This principle is the meaning in that old nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.” The wall represented strength, stability, and endurance. But when the egg (Humpty Dumpty) fell off the wall and cracked wide open, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again”! It was as hard as unscrambling an egg – impossible! The record of these wicked pagan cultures is found today in the dusty artifacts and inscriptions dug up by archaeologists.

Job 12:15 says, “He sendth them out, and they [the waters] overturn the earth.” This is geology – the sedimentary rock layers, some full of flora and fauna life-forms. These stratified layers from turbidity currents and sedimentation were laid down in the Genesis flood cataclysm that destroyed the first world (2 Peter 3:3-7). This is what the earth (geology and archaeology) teaches us (Job 12:8). A wealth of information has been gathered from this in the last 150 years. God is giving fair warning for the endtime judgment by fire (2 Peter 2:5-9).

How is Truth Found?

We also learn history from records in books. However, all the facts in God?s Word and world are subject to interpretation. Both records can be misinterpreted, but to the truehearted facts reveal truth.

The varied conclusions of people show that extracting truth from facts is more a matter of the will than of the mind (knowing many facts). Jesus was asked the question, “What is truth?” by a man who was in a tight spot (John 18:38). This ruler, Pilate, perceived Jesus’ innocence and authority in his interview with Him, through his wife’s dream, and the chief priests’ envy (Matthew 27:19; Mark 15:10). But it was too costly to his prestige and position to release Jesus so he “stone-walled” when Jesus said, “Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice.” He responded, “What is truth?” (John 18:37, 38).

Pride and the cost of standing for truth is the root cause for many who say you can?t know what truth is. Jesus indicated this when He said, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God” (John 7:17). Self-will is what causes many to look at what God says in His Word and say, “It doesn’t mean that.”

Many also look at the fossils of plant and animal life in the geologic record and say, “That shows evolution.” However, it is unscientific to believe that the billions of bits of orderly information on each genetic code self-organized from inorganic minerals. The child of God has faith-but not that kind!

“Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11: 3). The Christian looks at the same facts and has the advantage of God’s revelation. He sees all the biodiversity about us and the billions of bits of information on the DNA along with its accumulating load of genetic defects. Mutations are always compromises of existing genes. They don’t add the millions of bits of precise information to the genome required for a working fin, leg, or wing. This points back to a perfect beginning when God wrote the original genetic codes at creation. Adam and Eve’s children could marry with no genetic problems.

The secular geologist sees hundreds of millions of years between rock layers. The simple Bible believer sees multi-strat fossils (fossil tree trunks crossing several rock layers). He sees fossilized fighting dinosaurs with their claws in each other, dozens of fish swallowing others, numberless brachiopods and clams closed up tight, fresh unwilted fern and plant fossils in coal. Organisms are not lying down and fossilizing like this in the real world. The believer also sees and accepts the truth of the sudden geologic catastrophe described in the Noahic flood (Genesis 7).

“The Truth Shall Make You Free”!

Thus we see that finding truth is a matter of whether we truly want it or not. The willing heart crucifies his rebellion against God and reality. He listens to that voice of conscience, the Holy Spirit, that leads into all truth (John 16:12-14). The Holy Spirit confirms in our heart that there is an eternal cause and purpose to life. There are absolutes, responsibilities, and accountability.

“Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left” (Isa. 30:21). The child of God has been given the Spirit of truth to lead us into all truth (John 16:13). “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). This truth from God will bring freedom from sin, the bondage of fighting, broken homes, and crumbling social structures.

Through Jesus, every binding chain can be broken and we can experience life, and that more abundantly (John 10:10)! He “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).

-by Elvin Stauffer

The latest piece of presumed “superior scholarship” defaming God, His Christ, and the Bible, is a movie released last summer called the Da Vinci Code. The book version has been on the New York Times best-seller list since its release in 2003. The reception of such heresy in our society is revealing—it is also a best-seller in 150 other countries. The book defames Jesus’ character and says Mary Magdalene bore children to Him. It says Jesus never intended to be God and accuses the disciples of cover-up plots to make Jesus look divine. The Bible is accused of having “glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications.” The book is fiction but conveys an aura of factuality. A statement in the beginning of the book says, “Fact: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”

That is not saying much. The pertinent fact is that the conjecture, inferences, and bold statements made are falsehoods. A character in the book refers to the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic Gospels as the earliest Christian documents. He says, “Troublingly they do not match up with the Gospels in the Bible.”

Perversions from False Sources

First of all, the Dead Sea Scrolls are not Christian documents. The Essenes were a Jewish sect that overlapped the time of Christ. Their writings do not refer to Jesus or Christians. They are, however, amazing confirmations that our Old Testament is accurate. They include parts of all the Old Testament books except Esther. These documents contained only minor spelling and punctuation differences from our Bible today.

The Gnostic gospels (the gospel according to Philip, Thomas, and so forth) come from the Nag Hammadi texts found by an Egyptian peasant in 1945. Authorities date them at 350 A.D., 250 years after the New Testament Gospels. None of the New Testament books are quoted. The Gnostic heresy was a mystic paganism that claimed to have secret superior knowledge (gnosis). They tried to reinterpret Jesus Christ. They denied His deity and said that Mary Magdalene was His companion.

From such materials, author Dan Brown weaves his novel, giving spurious documents more authority than the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels and Jesus’ deity are confirmed by believers and non-believers (Roman soldiers at the cross and tomb, etc.), a multitude of church fathers, archaeological findings, and secular sources. The life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ is one of the best-documented facts of history (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)

The Trail and Traits of Heresy

In the 1600s, a period of “enlightenment” called “the Age of Reason” arose. Francis Bacon introduced the experimental method as the science of understanding our world. He believed that by freeing the mind of prejudice, man by knowledge could gain sovereignty over nature. This advanced an objective rather than a subjective view of the universe (drawing conclusions from experiments, observations, evidence, and facts rather than preconceived opinions such as evolution). Objectivity acknowledges the fixed laws, complexity, order, and design of a creator. Many schools, scientific societies, and encyclopedias of knowledge originated in this era. Yale and Harvard were begun as church schools with a creation/flood view of earth history. However, in the mid-1800s, with Darwin’s Origin of the Species many armchair philosophers began to bend and select evidence to fit an evolutionary worldview.

The age of reason also produced the school of “higher criticism” which challenged orthodox Christianity. A typical attitude of “higher criticism” is seen in Spinoza (latter 17th century). He wrote a book supposing to prove that Ezra wrote the Pentateuch instead of Moses. Julius Wilhousen called the Old Testament a fraud. With an aloof flourish, they sweep the facts of archaeology and the testimony of history away. In their pride of heart they hold that authority in religion is in man’s own conscience rather than objectively in the Bible as the revelation of God and the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

Modernism and postmodernism followed, resting their trust on “the assured results of critical scholarship.” These errors of human wisdom can be traced in every century since the Gnostic heresy of the first century after Christ. The traits are monotonously the same, even to the New Age movement of our day.

1. They claim to have a supe rior view of Christianity.
2. They reject the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
3. They imagine that belief in oneself is belief in God.
4. They teach that Christ delivers man by His coming, not by His atonement.
5. They rejected the Virgin Birth.
6. They ridicule orthodoxy.
7. They claim that salvation is by illumination.

Paul’s warning is fitting here. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

Heresy’s Source

It is said that, at the start of a humanist convention, a standing round of applause was given for Eve (although they don’t believe the literal account), because she stepped out from under God’s authority to realize her own potential. This is the spirit of radical feminism today.

The origin of these heresies has its roots in the garden with Satan’s question to Eve (Genesis 3:1). “Yea—” He opens with a disarming affirmative and assumes a superior critic’s position. “Hath God said—” a cleverly expressed doubt in question form negating the affirmative. “Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” He falsifies God’s command that “Ye shall not eat of it” (Genesis 3:3).

This anarchist spirit has manifested itself down through history in men like Voltaire. Voltaire was a Frenchman who denied God and ridiculed Christianity. These “higher critics” rejected any authority but their own. In politics they influenced the bloody French Revolution. In religion they assumed the skeptics’ position. These critics denied the authority of the Scriptures and judged the Bible wrong until proved right. It is as Paul said, “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Romans 8:7).

Discerning Spirits

Today we see much of the same tactics of Satan. Professing scholarly superiority, evolutionists and their theistic religious sympathizers sideline those who believe God’s Word with ridicule and verbal defamation. Thus they avoid the facts of the real world that falsify their philosophy.

We must always discern the difference between facts and their interpretation. Some typical statements the public is bombarded with are: “In ten years we may find life in outer space” (a newspaper headline). Why? What did they see? They concluded all this from discovering a star with a wobble, indicating it may have a planet, and perhaps life!

Another newspaper headline says, “This dinosaur was a dwarf.” They seem to know why. “It shrank over time from living on an island when seas rose in Europe millions of years ago.” You would think the evolutionists were there to see it. Surely no one can go back to disprove their speculation.

In more conservative times, people were more careful of what they said about what they didn’t know. But today many are ready to believe the “spin” (a fancy name for falsehoods in the current vernacular) of the Da Vinci Code. They go far beyond the facts they have in hand to speculate on what they want to believe. Like Darwin, beginning with assumptions, by much talk, they work improbability up to possibility, and possibility to probability, and end with what they claim are certainties.

The simple humility of the Christian life is rejected. The “create your own reality” or “you are your only god” beliefs of new-age thinkers are evident. They take to themselves the prerogative of being right until proved wrong. Yet they will not accept the plain truth of “a more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19).

We have Peter’s testimony, “For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

Resources: Heresies Exposed—Wm. C. Irvine
The Da Vinci Effect — Craig Parshall
Israel My Glory — Jan.-Feb. 2006
World Book Encyclopedia

-by Elvin Stauffer

Reason is the process by which thinking people arrive at conclusions. It is a legitimate and necessary process that is neither right nor wrong in itself. The outcome of reason for good or evil is determined by preconceptions and the spirit that controls a person. Two Bible illustrations show right and wrong conclusions. The Pharisee in Luke 7:39 reasoned about Jesus, “This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.” The critical Pharisee had the preconception that you snub immoral people. Thus he “misread” Jesus and concluded He was but a man. Jesus, however, demonstrated truth with righteous motives. When the Pharisees questioned His authority to forgive sins, Jesus said, “What reason ye in your hearts? Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk?” (Luke 5:22, 23). Jesus then healed the man and he took up his bed and went to his house (verses 24, 25). In uniting the spiritual with the physical, Jesus gave the essential ingredient for successful living in His world.

Jesus’ words, “Take heed that ye be not deceived,” shows that we need to be discerning. “Try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). We agree. Deceivers and brazen blasphemy abound today. Multitudes of voices are calling, “Listen to me, I’m right.” In the midst of all this, God’s great salvation invitation remains, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18)

Human Rationale

The word science comes from the Latin word scientia which means “knowledge.” It deals with the broad field of facts and their relationships in our physical universe. Experiments and observations are devised to test what is true. The World Book Encyclopedia goes on to say that in the humanities (religion, philosophy, and the arts), “there is no test that tells whether a philosophical system is ‘right.’” This denies the standard of righteousness in the Word of God, which is the only infallible rule for the Christian’s faith and practice.

Secularists draw a hard line between science (knowledge) and religion, saying the first is fact and the second is superstition to satisfy an emotional need. Divorcing spiritual truth from the physical world is an attempt by man to make the use of things amoral—neither right nor wrong. This is a formula for chaos, fear, and death. Left to himself, every man’s rule of what is right favors his own faults, lusts, self-will, or crimes (see Judges 21:25).

Human reasoning has produced numerous religions with gods like themselves (see Romans 1:23). These religions are not according to God’s standard of righteousness at all. They try to gain power for themselves. None dare challenge their rationality. They and their prophets can deceive, be immoral, have numerous wives, kill and plunder, mercilessly kill and oppress innocent men, women, and children. They imagine they are right because they believe their god is (by definition of the word god) always right. What our God does is always right. God abides by a perfect standard of righteousness. Their god and religion are not open to question. However, their power to work their will only shows they are the strongest, not that they are right. The same is true of the evolutionary “faith.” Fear of a powerful majority keeps people in line with what is politically correct even when the consequences are conflict, bondage, suicide, and murder.

God Abides in Righteousness

To understand the conflict between today’s major religions, we need to understand the nature of their gods. The true Jehovah God subjects himself to a moral standard of righteousness. Thus there are some things He cannot do. God cannot lie (see Titus 1:2). God “cannot be tempted with evil neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13). He can’t be unjust (see Romans 3:26) nor do anything that violates righteousness. God is holy and right because He is righteous. Unlike other gods, evil is not made good just because He does it.

God’s moral standard is according to purity, justice, mercy, faithfulness, equality, and truth. His conformity to righteousness is the whole reason for the need of a special plan to take people who have sinned to heaven. A sovereign, uninhibited by a standard of righteousness, could arbitrarily save some and damn others. But God devised a plan of deliverance or salvation by which Jesus’ sacrificial death made a way for our sins to be forgiven. God can now forgive sins and still “be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:21-26).

In the Christian faith, we see God stepping into human experience to make a people like Himself. The true Creator is proved by His goodness toward mankind. “Thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands” (Job 14:15). “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Those who perpetrate fear, suffering, and death to extract conformity are enemies of God (Matthew 13:27, 28). Since there are only two opposing supernatural powers, we know Satan is the source of all deception and wickedness. He does not have a vested interest in the welfare of God’s creation.

Christianity is a voluntary choice. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17). Therefore it is the champion of sound thinking in the world. The Christian has “renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Righteousness is the rule for those who become children of God. Truth is not what we make it. Truth is what it is! To find truth we must leave our own pride and righteousness (Romans 10:3) and humbly pursue the righ-teous standard of God. God’s righteous reason is so much higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:7-9). Any credibility gap that we have must be submitted to the final revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Conflict of Righteous Reason

The conflict with right reasoning is seen in America by a battle that is heating up for the minds and hearts of the next generation. Secularists are continually dismayed at the polls showing a majority belief in God despite two generations of evolutionary teaching. Yet their influence has opened an explosion of the occult such as the Harry Potter series. Those who have faith that the complex biologic diversity of our world self-organized from inorganic elements will spend millions to brainwash young children with their belief. So-called scientific organizations spend taxpayers’ money to propagate their unscientific doctrine.

Christian ethics has been the foundation of civil societies throughout history, but there has always been a conflict between what is false and what is right (Gen. 3:15).

We live in a time when there is a battle for the media’s ear. Those who have their cause presented favorably are seen as right. Selected facts, half-truths, and outright lies are being said to get things accepted. This is the sure result of rejecting God’s righteous standard of absolutes. People are then conditioned to follow the majority. Do as you are told. Don’t think “outside the box.” In this environment, the believer in absolute truth becomes an obstacle. Finally society turns against the people of God for making right and wrong and good and bad out of issues and people.

In the midst of this propaganda God is still appealing to man’s conscience with truth. By the still small voice within He speaks, “This is the way, walk ye in it” (Isaiah 30:21).

-by Elvin Stauffer

It was hard to believe but there I was on a cold, sunny afternoon in October, cleaning off the fossil bones of a duckbilled dinosaur on an Alberta hillside along the Bow River.

I had flown into Alberta from Pennsylvania a few days earlier. As we flew to our landing at Calgary, I looked down at the flat Alberta plains and pondered the interesting geology in this part of God’s earth.

Alberta Geography

My daughter and son-in-law live in southeastern Alberta where the land is semi-arid and normally gets less than 10 inches of rainfall a year. However, the land is flat enough that in the 1920s thousands of acres were graded, using horses and scrapers, for flood irrigation. The soil is made up of fine, dense sediments. When it is wet, it is a pasty muck that builds up on boots. These fine sediments evidently settled out when floodwaters became still, near the end of the worldwide deluge described in Genesis 6-8.

Alberta Geology

The layered sediments below these flat Alberta plains contain numberless fossil remains of plants and animals. Ground water is not fit for drinking because of the oil, gas, and coal (fossil fuels) contained in thousands of feet of sedimentary flood layers. In our stressed Pennsylvania coal region, these layers are compressed, wrapped, and stood up past vertical (90 degrees) at places. However, in the Alberta prairie, the sedimentary layers remain close to the flat gravitational plane in which they were deposited.

The contents of these layers have been exposed to our view today by the Red Deer River. It has cut a canyon across the Alberta plains over a mile wide and 4,000 feet deep. Much of the layered deposits are bentonite soil. Bentonite is a gray clay of volcanic ash origin that swells to twice its size when wet. It shrivels and crumbles up like popcorn on the surface when it dries out. This is some of the worldwide evidence that there was also extensive volcanic action when “all the fountains of the great deep [were] broken up” in Genesis 7:11. The creatures in this area may have suffocated in ash instead of drowning.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller in the Red Deer River Valley has one of the best collections of dinosaurs in the world. Here many dinosaur skeletons have been reconstructed along with displays of the mammals, plants, and marine life that have been found with them. Over 300 museum-quality dinosaur skeletons have been found along the Red Deer River. At Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, a few skeletons of dinosaurs have been simply cleaned off and a shelter with windows built over the site for people to view them.

Finding a Dinosaur

One day, my son-in-law, Kevin, asked if I wanted to go out along the Bow River to look for some bones some young people had seen on a hike. With my interest in fossils, I readily agreed. So we packed lunch for the family and all headed south to some eroded hills along the Bow River. We soon were walking over hills and gullies with holes and subterranean passages. It was the same volcanic bentonite soil with some hoodoos (pillars with a hard flat rack on top that prevented erosion) as is found in the Red Deer River Valley.

We found the hill we were looking for which had about a 60-foot drop-off on one side to the Bow River. We searched around the top and suddenly we saw it. A piece of white bone about one inch long was exposed on the side of the hill near the top. I cleaned around it and immediately contacted another bone surface.

We decided to go down to the van and eat lunch. Our plan was for Kevin to take the family back and get some pans and tools while I stayed and worked at the site. Thus, I spent the pleasant afternoon alone, carefully cleaning away the soil as more and more bones were exposed.

We also found a few pieces of bone lying around loose on the surface. A bone about a foot long was embedded in the surface about 15 feet to the right but too close to the edge of the cliff to reach. When Kevin came back towards evening, we collected two vertebra and parts of three ribs plus a seven-inch bone along one of the vertebra. We also saw a flat bone surface the size of a hand exposed when we left. Definitely, there was something bigger behind it.

The bones were fractured in 1-2 inch pieces. We worked till 11:00 that night gluing pieces together until our glue ran out. On Monday, we called and talked to the senior scientist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller who said he would look at the bones. When we got to the museum he immediately set the seven-inch bone on top of a round vertebra and said, “This is a caudal vertebra of a hadrosaur” (caudal refers to the tail). After some discussion of where the site was, he also said he must keep the bones. He said they often find fossils through other people like us. However, there is a law against excavating fossils in Alberta. (He noted they had not found much along the Bow River and will likely be interested in digging the site.) He has since been communicating with the organization controlling the grazing land where the hadrosaur was found.

Hadrosaurs

Hadrosaurs are the most plentiful kind found in the fossil record. Adults were 2-5 tons and up to 33 feet long. They had duckbills and webbed feet and evidently worked the lakes and streams of the early world. A flatter world with a land-water mix is indicated in 2 Peter 3:5, 6. “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” The catastrophic geologic forces at work in the flood year pushed up the high mountains that we see today (Psalm 104:5-9). After the Flood, the climate produced adverse extremes of heat and cold, stressing large reptile creatures.

The names of some dinosaurs, Albertosaur and Edmontosaur (for the city of Edmonton) show how Alberta and the western United States are major dinosaur locations. Duckbill dinosaurs have been found at places here in all stages of growth from eggs (with embryos) to adults. Nesting sites like this indicate they took care of their young. It was astounding to touch the remains of animals that perished in the flood event. These ribs and vertebra were once living parts of a creature ranging in the pre-flood world.

Interpretations of Facts

We walked through the museum at Drumheller and took pictures of some hadrosaur skeletons showing vertebra and ribs like those we had found. A suggestion box was mounted on the wall at the desk of the museum. “You help us evolve” was written over a silhouette of Darwin’s head. Really! Did the amazing displays of dinosaurs and their environment at the museum happen by accident without any intelligent input! Even a child, if he is encouraged to think, knows better. In a discussion with one of the museum personnel, we told her we don’t have the faith to believe that all the complex biologic diversity of our world, self-organized from inorganic minerals. There are billions of bits of ordered genetic information on the genome of each plant and animal. God is the author of these genetic codes (Psalm 139:13-16).

Despite their best efforts to convince people of evolution by random processes, the museums themselves are evidence against accidental evolution and evidence for a Designer. God’s creation is much more intricate than anything man has ever made. Evolution is an impossible, unscientific belief system. “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6:20).

-by Elvin Stauffer

The complexity and order in nature from the billions of bits of precise DNA information on our genomes(Psalm 139:16) to the life cycle dependency of organisms in our ecosystem (Psalm104:14) are proof of God. But beyond that, that we find beauty in creation reveals a personality of emotion, pleasure, and goodwill (Revelation 4:11; 1 Timothy6:17). God’s predominate trait is love. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). This is not a selfish love of self-gratification but is revealed in seeking the welfare and delight of mankind. It reveals itself in nature, in beauty, designs, and miraculous innovations that could not self-organize from random chaos (Ecclesiastes3:11).

The pagan (both ignorant and educated) venerates the earth, the animals, birds, and the sun,moon, and stars. The Christian worships the cause of all this, the Creator who paints the sunsets!

Beauty and Fine Humor in Creation

A scientist born and raised under the repression of communism began to see the conflict of his evolutionary teaching with the real world. His testimony was, “I came to realize that the order, beauty, and sense of fine humor with which the world is built cannot come from chaos and randomness. I was sure there was a designer.” Often, in the absence of some quality, we begin to think about and value it more highly. So, in the somber existence under godless communism, people began to notice the cooperation, mutual dependence, and beauty in creation. This is a witness that God has invested Himself in nature (Romans 1:20).

The Personality of God Revealed

In Job 38 and 39 God gave Job a long science quiz. The implied answers reveal His sovereignty over creation and man’s weakness. “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” “Where is the way where light dwelleth?” Man still isn’t sure what light or gravity physically is. “Canst thou send lightnings that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?” Can we fully understand the principles that make the telephone possible? How can electricity be used to carry voices so we can say, “Hello, here we are.” How could the intricate patterns on bird plumage appear except by an innovative God of sensitivity, emotion, and humor? “Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?” (39:13).

Birds could just honk, squeak, or croak to call mates and defend territory, but they were given voices to sing beautiful songs of warbles, trills, and flute-like notes. Who thought of putting the parallel black and white lines down a chipmunk’s back? The animal doesn’t care. The colors and designs off lowers are beautiful works of art. Intricate designs are seen in nature such as the geometry in the spiral design of sunflower seeds. The closer we look, the more amazing the precision and design becomes,
down to and beyond the molecular level.

The wood duck would be an artistic achievement for any innovative person. Begin with a small duck. First divide the lower body with a vertical black and white band. Make the back part a light brown color and the front a dark chocolate brown. Separate it from the upper wing with a series of black and white curved lines. In the chocolate front put vertical rows of little white arrow dots. Give it a pure white throat with a white band going around the neck and another up around to accent the cheek.

Next do the head. Start with a prominent feather crest that curves down the back. Make it dark green with a multicolored bill-red and black with a yellow base. The eye is bright red outlined in orange. Then take a very fine paintbrush and outline the crest with a thin white line. Start at a point on the bill and follow up around the top and back down to the rear point of the crest. Another fine line returns toward the eye and ends above the cheek line. More designs can be found in the back and tail. The DNA information for all the colors on the feathers to lineup for the precise design exceeds the achievement of a color laser printer. No wonder someone has loosely defined wood ducks as “water fowl in wedding dress.”

The human body is also a marvel of design and beauty. “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth” (Psalm 139:14, 15).

The Failure of Materialistic Evolution

Evolution’s supposed mutation of genes, natural selection, and survival of the fittest is strictly a utilitarian process. Only those things that serve a purpose and help an organism survive should arise and remain. Utilitarian means “aiming at usefulness rather than beauty or style.” The scientific law of entropy would further degrade the result of naturalistic evolution. This second law of thermodynamics governs the universe and states the fact of “the dissipation of energy and tendency toward disorder” (see Hebrews 11:1). This law in evolution’s hypothetical long ages would even eliminate any designs that did not give an organism a survival advantage. This proven law of decay comes from God’s curse on creation because of sin (Genesis 3:17). The “law of sin and death” now affects all men (Romans 8:2). God also promises that this whole creation will yet be “delivered from the bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21).

What we see in our world is God upholding His universal laws by His power (Hebrews 1:3) while the curse of sin brings degeneration. “They all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up” (Hebrews 1:11-12). The travail of degeneration and death was not God’s original plan (Romans8:20).

Years ago we found some “sea eggs” along the seashore in the Bahamas. These fragile calcium shells are the outside skeletons of sea urchins. The round urchin is a drab gray-green color with spines sticking out all around when it is alive. But the white calcium shell that is left when the body dies and decays is beautiful. It has rows of white dots running down around the sides in bands of soft violet. Rather than having any survival advantage this beauty could only be seen after it was dead! Such beauty and design are purposeless except for its appeal to the spirit of man and the glory of God. It does seem that it takes a touch of God in the soul to strike a note of harmony with the touch of God in nature.

The Nature of Man Exposed

God intended that order and “the beauty of holiness” (righteous living) would exist among people also. Jesus was born into the world to bring “on earth peace, good will toward men”(Luke 2:14). We have been given bodies with amazing functions and an intellect and strength to serve others. The Christian magnifies the cooperation and beauty in nature, and meekness and righteousness among men.

It’s not without significance that evolutionists glorify struggle for the top (being the survivor) which brings suffering and death to the weaker (survival of the physically fittest [most powerful and ruthless]). It’s the evil nature in man that relishes battle and supremacy. They ignore the suffering masses and their own final needs when human weakness reaches them. Instead of tolerance, and respect for life and others that make a nation strong, we see killing of the unborn, and school and workplace shootings. Growing intolerance is seen in a litigating society with animosity between welfare and well-to-do classes. Selfism brings much conflict and sorrow. To these people,the evidence of God in the marvels of this world are lost.

The danger in extremes, as with most things, gives Satan an opportunity to snare people with venerating beauty above God. When people do see natural beauty, too often they worship and serve “the creature more than the creator” (Romans 1:25). A primary avenue of leaving true faith (apostasy) is in magnifying the arts (music, painting, sculpture, poetry and other literature, and physical beauty) over obedience to the principles and Word of God. Emotional soul worship is the opposite extreme of callousness to the intimacy of a personal, born-again experience with Jesus. This “soulish” worship is warned against in the Scriptures by Jesus and others (Luke 6:46; James 2:17, 18; Malachi 2:13).

A Beautiful Life

The best manifestation of beauty in the earth is for God’s people to demonstrate His will and power in a beautiful life. The beauty of character when the fruits of the Spirit are exercised, and men, women, youth, and children are at rest with each other and with God is a miracle of grace.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (Galatians5:22, 23).

A delight to do God’s will produces the beauty of holiness demonstrated in righteousness. “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever” (Isaiah32:17).

-by Elvin Stauffer