General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 59th Session

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General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Kwabena Donkor

Yes, Creation!

Evolutionary thought, Spiritualism and the End of Time

Lee Spencer

How Many Dinosaurs Were On the Ark?

Ariel Roth

Some scientific data that favors a recent creation

Stan Hudson

The Biblical creation is central to the local church

Greg King

Is Biblical Creation Passé?

Nikolaus Satelmajer

Rollin Shoemaker

Sabbath and Creation

Paleontology and the Bible: Science in action

John Baldwin

Why Does a Good Creator Permit Evil?

JoAnn Davidson

...and it WAS good

Jim Gibson

Lions in the Garden of Eden

Richard Davidson

Does Genesis Really Teach a Recent, Literal, Seven-Day Creation Week and a Global Flood?

Tim Standish

DNA and Design

Jacques Doukhan

Creation, the Heart of SDA Theology

How to share creation in outreach on secular campuses

Do millions of years solve the problem?

Ed Zinke

Theistic evolution and the end of Adventism

Ronny Nalin

Dealing with uncertainty

Ted N.C. Wilson

God’s Literal, Six-day, Recent Creation--The Church’s Position

Creation and Evolution: A brief history

Clifford Goldstein

Seventh-day Darwinians

My topic today is Lions in the Garden of Eden. Here's the issue. If God created predators, which I'm just calling killers, how could death be the result of Adams sin if they were created, okay, from the beginning, but if God did not create predators, then where did they come from? Well, that, that's the question we wanna look at this afternoon. First of all, was there predation in Eden? Well, plants were provided as food in Eden, in there were no predators in Eden, none recorded whatsoever in scripture. The provision for vegetation as food extended beyond humans to the animals as well, That's expressed in Genesis one. Verse 29 and 30. Will there be predators in what we could call paradise, the new earth that the new creation? Well, no, there won't be any predators there. Isaiah Levin says, the bear will graze. I've often heard about the lion eating straw like an ox, but I hadn't really noticed so much. The bear will. What does it mean to graze like a cow, right? It eats grass so the the bear will eat grass. That's the new kind of a, a new way of doing things. Revelation 21, 14, no more death. All right, those, those are some biblical background there. Apparently it is possible to have an ecology without predation, since death is due to sin and predation is a kind of death causes death, and predation must have come as a result of sin. Romans five twelves tells us that sin brought death. And Romans eight 19 to 23 links in that passage. Human death is linked with the groaning of creation. Some, some folks would like to separate human death in a separate category. I I, I, I don't see how that can be done. Really. You have to kind of take a certain approach to the text that I think is, is not the natural reading of it. Alright, well, well we've, we've kind of taken the position now, maybe sticking our necks out a little bit, that there wasn't any predation in Eden. There won't be any predation in the new Earth. Predation is not part of God's plan. Predation came in after sin. Well, we've got some questions about that. You know, is that really a plausible position? Aren't first question, aren't predation and death necessary ecologically to avoid overpopulation and to recycle nutrients? You've heard that argument. We need it. If we, if we, we didn't have predation, we'd be nehi and cockroaches. Well, here's a response to that. If you didn't have death, you would, there would be no need for reproduction because you would not need to re be replacing individuals and there's no danger of overpopulation under such circumstances. So, death, overpopulation, predation are all related with regard to recycling. Predation does not do much recycling, almost virtually. All recycling is done by microbes, bacteria, fungi, things like that. So the role of predators in recycling of nutrients is nil or is negligible. Here's a second question on predation. Isn't death unavoidable? For example, when we grow, as we develop certain structures that the cells multiply and divide and expand, and then on other areas the cells die and the the, the body is shaped by the selective growth and death of various cells. And another argument is that when we consume plant material, which God gave us to eat, the cells of the plant die. So isn't death simply unavoidable? Well, how would we respond to that? Well, one possibility is that this is a category confusion. Biblically death always applies to individuals, not to their component cells or tissues. So to say that death can't occur becau or has to occur because cells die, is, is not what the Bible is addressing. The Bible doesn't even address that question. And there may be a, a, a danger of confusing the idea of death with the idea of decay or thermodynamics and, and such other questions. But we need to keep those questions separately for a further response to that question is that in the, in the biblical culture, plants were not even considered to be alive. You didn't have plants that were live and plants that were dead. You had plants that were green and plants that were dry. Remember the words of Jesus? He said, he said, if they do this, when the plant is green, what will they do with the dry? So in, in the, to the people who are writing the Bible, they were not thinking of plants when they're talking about death. A a third question about predation. In Psalm 1 0 4, 21, God is credited at the, the young lions seek their food from the, from God. God provides food for the predators. Now, would God provide food for lions to kill if it was evil for them to kill? Is God evil? Well, what kind of response would we give to that? Well, Jesus said, God sends his son to shine and the rain to fall on the good and on the evil. Just because God blesses us does not mean he endorses everything we do. And I'm, I'm thankful for that cuz I'm sure I wouldn't get any sunshine or rain if it were otherwise. Certainly all of us have flaws, and I don't think any of us should take the position that because we enjoy God's blessings, therefore what we think on a particular topic or what we do in a particular arena is approved by God. No, we can just be thankful that God is merciful to me a sinner and sense his reign on all. So a fourth question on predation. Predation requires so much change in organisms that it seems more like evolution than like creation. Well now this is, this is perhaps a little more serious question. First response, and I have a series of responses here. My first response is, that's not necessarily true in all cases. In many cases, changing a fruit eating animal into a predator is largely a matter of behavior, not anatomy. For example, dogs, bears, cats and so on. Those sorts of animals, animals. Now, to change a cow into a predator would involve some significant physiological changes because the cow's anatomy is designed for processing of bulky vegetation. But a fruit eater does not require very much change. Many, many creatures, many animals, can eat either fruit or meat and that they're omni omnivorous. That's not a factor. And most, i, I don't know of any predators that that look like they started out as grass eaters, but you know, we don't know. In other cases, however, predation may result from degeneration. And as an example, an eaters, the ant eaters are belong to a group called ate. That's the, that's the, a common name for them, a common technical term. Ate means lacking teeth, and they have long tongues that they stick out and gather the ants. So what they would eat if they had teeth when they're developing, they actually had teeth during a certain stage of their development, but the teeth then are dissolved away and they're no longer there. So degeneration can explain some behavior, can explain some, but there's still others. We do not know how much genetic change is needed to produce a predator. For example, if it were your, if you knew how to create or, or how to manage the development, let not not call it creation. If you knew how to manage the development of, say, a dog you knew and you had access to his dna, you could turn on and off genes. You could insert DNA sequences or cut out DNA sequences, you could rearrange genes and so on, and their timing. How many, how many changes would you need to make to convert a dog into something that wasn't a dog? I don't think anyone really has a very good idea of what the answer is. If it took five genetic changes, you might see well, but maybe something like that could happen. If it took 5 million genetic changes, you'd probably say, I, I I'm very skeptical about that. We don't know the answer. We don't know how much change might have occurred in species. In fact, some predators might have undergone major anatomical changes. Consider the snakes, for example. Snakes are completely without legs, although there are a few species of boas that have little tiny spurs, which are the remnants of hind legs. They don't amount to very much, but they're in the, they have the, the positional relationships of animals with legs. And we have of course lizards, many kinds of lizards that have lost their legs. Some have two legs that are small, some have four legs that are small, some have no legs. There's clearly been degeneration that has occurred. And a so accompanying with that degeneration, it's, it, it's conceivable that perhaps changes in behavior, changes in diet have occurred. But to try to quantify that, as far as I know, there is no way we know right now how to quantify those kinds of changes. But the, the situ, there are some examples that are even a little more difficult to deal with. Some predators appear designed specifically for predation. Snakes are an example of that. Humans are now capable of causing major changes in animals. Could we do something like that experimentally? Or how far away are we from being able to, to distort the creation? You probably remember a movie called Jurassic Park where there is very kind of a imaginary idea of taking in some DNA and reconstructing an animal from the dna. At this point in time, some of us are a bit skeptical that that would be possible. We don't really know development so well in biological development so well that we could be confident in how much we can do. Some of it depends upon where the information is located to construct a body. In some organisms, it appears that some of that information resides in the cell membrane so that some of the positional relationships of the structure of the organism are, are not determined by the dna. The DNA provides the materials and the materials go out into the, into the cell. And when they find the place in the cell membrane where they fit, then they initiate growth. If that's true, then it, there may be limits on how much you can change an organism. It may be that you cannot take the DNA from one organism and put it in another organism and, and create the kind of organism that the DNA came from. It may depend on what's, what, what the connections are. We, at this point, I think, are still exploring questions like that. Are I right? So maybe there have been extensive changes to produce predators. But here's a fifth question which sort of builds on the last part of quest of the, of the commentary on fourth question. And that is, don't we, don't we regard the design of creatures? Is that we see, don't we regard that as evidence of creation? So when we see predators that appear to be designed for predation, does this mean god's a creator of evil or, or could Satan create, you know, just how do we, how do we deal with that question? It's, it's difficult and, and I'm gonna propose an idea that I think many of my colleagues will roundly condemn me for, but that's, that's all right. I wonder just how much Satan has influenced the creation. We say many of these things are the result of sin. What does that mean? Does sin produce a mechanism that changes things or is there an intelligent agent involved? Has the creation come under the influence of an evil agent? Well consider what happened in the story of Joe Fire came down from heaven, who brought it down. Satan burned up, burned up the animals, some of the animals. He caused a great wind. He caused disease. I just wonder, are we underestimating Satan? Jesus called Satan, the prince of this world in three different texts in the gospel of John three times he referred to him as the prince or ruler of this world in Genesis six verses 11 and 12. And, and Dr. Davidson referred to this also. All flesh was corrupted and the earth was filled with violence before the flood. Apparently the, one of the things that called for the destruction of the world was violence. And I think predation is a form of violence. Nature was corrupted. So I, I think that we, we may need to examine our, our thinking on, on the cause of, of evil in nature and, and not be so, not be so generous with the devil. Here are some conclusions. Predation was not part of the original creation and will not be part of the new creation as far as we can tell. That is what the Bible tells us. It appears that predation is the result of the curse of sin and Satan's activities. Now it is conceivable and there are some who, who maintain this. And I, I, I don't wish to deny this idea when God cursed the earth at Adam's fall, he may have introduced some kind of retooling of the ecology. He may have provided certain changes in nature at that time that that's a possibility. But I still think we see the footprints of the evil one in the evil that we see in nature. And I think to attribute that all to God may reflect the poor understanding of his character.

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Series

Yes, Creation!

Lions in the Garden of Eden

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

Evolutionary thought, Spiritualism and the End of Time

How Many Dinosaurs Were On the Ark?

Some scientific data that favors a recent creation

The Biblical creation is central to the local church

Is Biblical Creation Passé?

Sabbath and Creation

Paleontology and the Bible: Science in action

Why Does a Good Creator Permit Evil?

...and it WAS good

Lions in the Garden of Eden

Does Genesis Really Teach a Recent, Literal, Seven-Day Creation Week and a Global Flood?

DNA and Design

Creation, the Heart of SDA Theology

How to share creation in outreach on secular campuses

Do millions of years solve the problem?

Theistic evolution and the end of Adventism

Dealing with uncertainty

God’s Literal, Six-day, Recent Creation--The Church’s Position

Creation and Evolution: A brief history

Seventh-day Darwinians

Sound Doctrine