2016 Creation Conference

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Midvale Park SDA Church

Leonard Brand

Science and the Bible

Were we created in the way that the Bible describes?

It really comes down to, which we'll see here pretty quick, what's our source of authority?

And is it the Bible or is it what science has to say?

And so here are our sources of authority.

And it's a little more complicated because of the way it's being dealt with.

Over here, this point of view that has life evolving, for some people, it still has the Bible sort of involved.

And so they'll think, well, yeah, we are being biblical.

But yet, you notice where the Bible is here in this approach.

We refer to this as theistic evolution, the idea that God used evolution for millions of years as his means of creation.

And the reason I'm comparing those here today is because this is becoming very prominent in Christian thinking.

In that theistic evolution, life evolved over hundreds of millions of years.

God was vaguely involved somehow, but not directly doing the creation.

Whereas in our literal creation point of view, which many people think is very naive, but it takes the Bible seriously and recognize that humans and other forms were created by God in a literal creation week.

Like I was saying, this is important because it is becoming, theistic evolution is becoming very widespread in the Christian community in general.

It's rapidly going over to theistic evolution.

Now, that doesn't mean that the people in the pews in the churches necessarily accept that, but their leaders do.

The scholarly world and the theologians, I find just have gone that way.

They do that because they're convinced that science has demonstrated evolution over millions of years, and so they have to fit in somehow and reinterpret the Bible accordingly.

And Elder Zinke will tell you some reasons why we don't interpret it that way.

So I'm gonna be talking about several things about how, what science has to tell us and what new information we have pertinent to this.

Okay, so the, like I say, choices are changing and I'll just give you a little hand signal when I needed to have the slide change, so if you'll be watching.

So let's just talk for a minute, why is it that we care about creation and evolution.

And I think it will give you more of the answers of this.

But just to think about for a minute, why do we worship God?

In Revelation 4, Levanant gives us the answer.

You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power.

Before you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created.

Psalm 103, know that the Lord, he is God.

He is he who has made us and not we ourselves.

To whom then shall we like, shall you liken me?

To whom shall I be equal, says the Holy 1.

Lift up your eyes on high and see, and here's the answer.

This is consistently the reason why God is worthy of our worship.

For all the gods of the peoples are idols.

The people in Israel had trouble with this all the time.

And it isn't just Genesis versus the rest of the Bible.

It's all through the Bible you find that the Bible writers and Jesus accepted the literal creation as being true.

And just 1 little idea that is very helpful to me, Jesus and the Old Testament.

Now think of Jesus' mission to this earth.

He was to come here, live his life and die and be resurrected, to live as we live and show that you accomplished various things, but 1 was to show that a person can indeed do that, live a holy life, and he could not have an advantage over us.

If he had had an advantage, he could not have accomplished his mission.

He could not use his divine power, And yet he was to come here as a baby and face the devil who's had thousands of years of experience in tricking people.

How could that even, how could we even think that that will work?

Well, God gave himself an advantage, a tremendous advantage that we can also have if we will take it.

And that is he had his servants write the book that he knew he'd be reading when he got here, the Old Testament.

And this book had to be reliable, it had to be trustworthy, it had to be factual, It had to tell him how life was created and that he was the creator and who the enemy was.

All these things he had to learn from that book.

He could not get direct information in a way that we can't get it.

So that gives us, to me, an insight into a very important reason why we should trust the Old Testament.

Okay, what does the Sabbath, the fourth commandment, say about creation?

And it's a continual reminder for all these thousands of years, the Sabbath is a reminder that God is a creator of the wonders we see all around us, these fantastic creatures and these beautiful flowers and the fruit that we eat, so delightful.

So what does it take to make all these natural wonders?

Well, it takes the laws of chemistry and physics, and science will tell us that's all it is.

That's what creates everything, the laws of chemistry and physics.

And indeed, those laws are very important.

He made the laws of chemistry and physics.

Science tells us, though, that those laws will make everything.

Do you just let the laws of chemistry and physics do their thing?

By themselves, they won't even make a tricycle, okay?

But science will tell us, well, yeah, sure, not right away, but maybe if we wait, Maybe if we wait a hundred million years, we'll see what happens.

Okay, so here's what happens in a hundred million years.

Your toolkit, you know, still has some remnants left, but you don't have an automobile.

Besides the laws of nature, and those are indeed very important, those are God's toolkit, but it requires an engineer with a plan and a mechanism to put the plan into effect.

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