Creation

“Evening and Morning”
“After Its Kind”
“The Generations of Adam”
“In the Image of God”
“Of the Dust of the Ground”

“EVENING AND MORNING”

THE Bible’s approach to the subject of creation starts with the reasonable assumption that a Creator, an intelligent First Cause, already existed—“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” (Gen. 1:1) While many scientists lack faith in the existence of a personal Creator, attributing all the creative works to the operation of natural law, there are many others who admit their inability to explain the operation of natural law except from the standpoint that back of it there is an intelligent Lawgiver. And many scientists today are freely admitting that the Darwinian theory of evolution has not been proven, hence should not be accepted as the answer to the problem of creation.

Prof. Beale, of King’s College, London, a distinguished physiologist, said:

“There is no evidence that man has descended from, or is, or was, in any way specially related to any other organism in nature, through evolution, or by any other process. In support of all naturalistic conjectures concerning man’s origin, there is not, at this time, a shadow of scientific evidence.”

Prof. Virchow, a naturalist of worldwide fame, said:

“The attempt to find the transition from the animal to man has ended in total failure. The middle link has not been found and never will be. Evolution is all nonsense. It cannot be proved by science that man descended from the ape or from any other animal.”

Sir William Dawson, an eminent geologist of Canada, said:

The record of the rocks is decidedly against evolutionists, especially in the abrupt appearance of new forms under specific types and without apparent predecessors. … Paleontology furnishes no evidence as to the actual transformation of one species into another. No such case is certainly known. Nothing is known about the origin of man except what is told in Scripture.”

A moment’s reflection upon the immensity and grandeur of the universe should suffice to convince us that behind all this display of intelligence and power must be the design of a great Being who is not only the Creator but One who is worthy of our reverence and worship as God. Well did the prophet write that only the foolish say in their hearts, “There is no God.” (Ps. 14:1; 53:1) David wrote: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.” (Ps. 19:1,2) Surely no truer statement of fact than this has ever been written!

An appreciation of the infinite power of the Creator and of our littleness should make us teachable. And how marvelously is the power of God manifested in his creative works! Think for a moment of our own solar system, which is but an infinitely small part of the universe. We would stand appalled at the great power of the Creator did not the Scriptures assure us that he is as loving and kind as he is wise and powerful.

“AFTER ITS KIND”

HAVING traced briefly the Genesis account of the creation and fall of man, and having found from the Scriptures that it is the plan of God to re-create the human race to live on this planet forever, let us now compare the findings of science with some of the details of biblical truth in order that we may have a greater faith in the testimony of God’s inspired Word concerning the divine plan for the eternal happiness of mankind. One of the points emphasized in Genesis is the fixity of species. Concerning this we read:

“And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: … And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”—Gen. 1:25,26

The Apostle Paul agrees with this statement of Genesis that each species of animal is constituted by nature to be separate and distinct from all other species, or orders, and that while they all are animals, consisting of flesh, yet they are not the same flesh; that is, they are unrelated. He says, “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”—I Cor. 15:39

All nature, as we know it today, corroborates the foregoing biblical declaration. So far as scientific observation goes, nature is unalterably opposed to the commingling of species or to the formation of new species: and it continually and successfully seeks to prevent it. It allows seemingly endless “varieties” according to fixed laws, but it has established limits beyond which variations cannot occur.

Furthermore, in the crossing of Varieties within a given fixed species, we see retrogression quite as often as we see improvement in the stock; and there Is no evidence whatsoever that nature is attempting to move forward by “infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress,” as the Darwinists have long theorized.

By artificial cultivation and forced cross-breeding of selected varieties, stocks may seemingly be improved or enlarged up to a certain point; but when left to themselves, nature soon brings them back to an ordinary level, instead of naturally carrying them “onward and upward” by an evolutionary law. Nature, when not interfered with, strives to bring all new varieties back to normal as quickly as possible, rather than inducing in them further progressive changes by “evolution.”

Every attempt at crossing two species results either in no descendant at all or else in a hybrid offspring being produced that is sterile and unable to perpetuate its kind—as occurs when the horse and donkey, or the horse and the zebra, are crossed.

These animals are so structurally similar that they can interbreed; but the resultant offspring is a sterile hybrid that cannot cross with anything. This supplies further proof that the species are fixed, that nature does not allow even very similar species to commingle and change into another, but calls a sudden halt every time any attempt in that direction is made.

Darwin himself, in his Origin of Species, made this frank admission: “in spite of all the efforts of trained observers, not one change of species into another is on record.” It is not surprising to Bible students, who have confidence in the story of special creation as recorded in Genesis, to learn that scientists, after nearly a century of effort, can find no positive proof to support a theory that is obviously at variance with the Word of God.

The late Prof. Vernon Kellogg, of Leland Stanford University, added his testimony to the host of his former colleagues. In his Darwinism of Today, page 18, he says, “We only tell the general truth when we declare that no indubitable cases of species-forming or transforming, that is, of descent, have been observed.”

To date, the most that has been accomplished in the effort to develop new species is the production of new varieties. However, some interesting things have been discovered in the field of genetics, such as Mendel’s Laws of Variation, and De Vries’s Mutations, which we may here briefly note.

From 1857 to 1868 Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, experimented with garden peas, crossing different varieties and producing new ones. His notations of the results came to the attention of Prof. Carl E. Correns, famous botanist, about thirty years later, and he soon found that Mendel had discovered a hitherto unknown law of heredity. Correns duplicated Mendel’s experiments, using the garden flower four-o’clock instead if peas, and found that they too followed Mendel’s “law.”

Correns crossed a red and a white variety of the flower “four-o’clock,” and, true to Mendel’s “law of segregation,” all the first generation were pink; that is, the red and white were evenly mixed. But in the second generation only half of them came pink—the remainder being pure white or pure red, just like the original parent stocks. They were just as pure as though they had never been mixed and continued to reproduce themselves without variation.

Mendel’s law of segregation is simply this: When any two simple varieties are crossed, only half of the genes, or hereditary elements, of each of the parent cells mix with each other, while the other half remain segregated and dormant; and in the second generation these segregated genes filter out and reproduce themselves in their original form, as though they had never been mixed. Mendel also discovered that if complex varieties are crossed (that is, if there is more than one difference between the parent stocks, as when yellow-round peas are crossed with green-wrinkled peas), not only will the original unmixed genes filter out in the second generation, but in addition there will be two new varieties of hybrids instead of one.

Dr. Thomas Hunt Morgan, when at Columbia University, found that animals obey Mendel’s law the same as do plants, and that finally the original stocks begin to filter out and reappear, even after having passed through successive generations of cross-breeding with other varieties. In none of these experiments, either with plants or with animals, has a new species been produced. Rather, Mendel’s laws seem to prove that the species are fixed and that the tendency of nature is to return to the original parent stocks rather than to get away from them, as Darwin erroneously imagined.

In 1900 Prof. G. De Vries, the late Dutch botanist, who had been experimenting extensively with the evening primrose, discovered that occasionally a new and strange variety would crop up, totally different from all other hybrids that were being produced by directly crossing the varieties. These new variants seemed to be freaks of nature, which came up in defiance of Mendel’s law and yet were able to perpetuate their variety if unmixed with others—although generally they could be readily mixed with any other variety of primrose.

De Vries called these freaks “mutants,” and he formulated a theory which seems to explain their existence. He believed that they result from some accidental scrambling or disarranging of the genes in the fertilized cell or germ plasm, which may happen either at the time of fertilization or subsequently and which prevents nature from taking its ordinary course. Mendel’s law thus represents nature’s normal process, while De Vries’s mutants seem to be the result of some accidental interference with nature.

Now if a mutant should ever be discovered that is so far changed from the original stock as to be incapable of mixing with it and at the same time would be fertile in itself and able to mix with other mutants like itself, then we would have a demonstration of a new species arising, or “evolving,” from an old species—the answer to every evolutionist’s prayer since Darwin’s day. But no such species has ever been discovered, notwithstanding many years of experimentation with this in view.

Even if such a mutant should finally appear, which is exceedingly unlikely (since their genes or hereditary elements are none other than those of the parent stocks), this would not prove the existence of a law of evolution; for these mutants apparently do not result from any law whatsoever but, in defiance of law, due to accident. At most, then, this would be accidental evolution, not “natural evolution.” Furthermore, these mutants are freaks and are often dwarfs, or otherwise inferior to the parent stock. Hence they do not obey a law of “progress,” such as Darwin’s theory demands.

Thus it is apparent that neither the discoveries of Mendel nor of De Vries, nor of any other experimenters in the field of genetics, have helped the case for evolution. Rather, they have proved to be a boomerang. As to the effects of Mendel’s and De Vries’s findings on Darwinism, let the late Dr. D. H. Scott, the well-known British botanist and erstwhile Darwinist, speak. In an article in Nature magazine, he had this to say:

“It has long been evident that all those ideas of evolution in which the older generation of naturalists grew up have been disturbed, or indeed transformed, since the re-discovery of Mendel’s work and the consequent development of the new science of genetics. Not only is the omnipotence of natural selection gravely impugned, but variation itself, the foundation upon which the Darwinian theory seemed to rest so securely, is now in question.

“The mutations of De Vries, though still accepted by many, seem to some at the present time to be nothing more than Mendelian segregates, the products of previous crossings; opinion on this subject is in a state of flux. In fact it is clear that we know astonishingly little about variation.”

Thus has experimental research brought the theorizing Darwinists to the crossroads of science, and they are having difficulty in deciding which way to turn. And perhaps without realizing it, many of them are finding themselves turning more and more in the direction of truth, as it is given in the creation story of Genesis.

A great conflict between truth and error is now being fought by the scientists themselves, and we may be sure that the truth will ultimately prevail. In this connection we are reminded of the following paragraph from the able pen of the late Dr. William Emerson Ritter, professor of Zoology at the University of California, which was published in Science magazine sometime ago. He therein wrote this significant sentence:

“If one scans a bit thoughtfully the landscape of human life for the last few decades he can hardly fail to see signs that the whole battleground of evolution will have to be fought over again, this time not so much between scientists and theologians, as among scientists themselves.”

It is truly remarkable that the Bible, written thousands of years ago, before the era of scientific research, should state so accurately and so definitely what now has been established as scientific truth, namely, that species are fixed. Only by divine inspiration could this have been possible. Let us then have confidence in this sacred record as we pursue our further investigation of its God-given truths.

Chapter III

“THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM”

UNLIKE the fantastic guesses of the scientists, which vary by millions of years, the Bible furnishes definite information concerning the exact date on the stream of time when the first human pair were created. The Bible is the only historical record in the world which begins with the first man, gives his name, the time of his creation and death, and traces his descendants, giving their names and ages in successive links of chronology for nearly four thousand years—or until a point of time at which secular history becomes reliable.

As an example of unreliable guesses, which by the thoughtless might be considered scientific, we recall an incident of more than fifty years ago. At that time the skeleton of a man was found in a former bed of the Mississippi River. At once some geologists began to calculate how many thousands of years might be indicated by the many feet of silt, slime, etc., covering the skeleton, as they fancied they had discovered a very valuable sample of a prehistoric man. Later, however, several feet below the skeleton, parts of a flatboat such as was used on the Mississippi less than fifty years before this, were found. This naturally completely upset the calculations of the geologists and relieved mankind of “another proof” that man has been on the earth for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years longer than taught in the Bible.

In no field of true science have there been any discoveries which disprove the age given to man by the Bible. Evolutionists realize, of course, that unless they can show that man has been on this earth for hundreds of thousands of years, then their theory that he has reached his present heights through “slow, infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress” cannot be supported by circumstantial facts. It is therefore quite a habit with evolutionists to make arbitrary statements regarding the age of fossils which they may discover, with the result that a credulous, unsuspecting public takes for granted that they know what they are talking about, that they have established these ages scientifically, hence they should not be questioned.

But when one inquires for the proof he generally finds that it rests upon little more than that some writers have said so. And the reason they have said so is that they have been trained from infancy in the Darwinian idea that man is a creature of remote antiquity, and they automatically try to confirm it.

But the fact is, as every archaeologist well knows, that all indisputable relics of human history vanish when we push our researches backward much more than 6,000 years. There is not a scrap of authentic human history, from any part of the earth, that dates farther back than about six millennia. Why is this? If it be true that men have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, or fifty thousand, or even for twenty thousand years, we certainly ought to be able to find unquestionable human records which can be shown beyond doubt to be far older than these mere sixty centuries.

Furthermore, if it be true that earliest man had not evolved to the present level of intelligence and culture, when the human record does begin it should give evidence of a very primitive race in a state of semi-barbarism. This is the theoretical picture which has been presented to us ever since our early grammar school days. And naturally we had reason to expect that some day the archaeologists would confirm it.

But what have they actually found along this line? Anthropologists have long known that the evidence points to Mesopotamia as the very “cradle of civilization.” It is here that authentic human history first begins; and from that region the human race overflowed into Assyria and the Aral-Caspian basin, thence to Europe, India, China, and elsewhere, while some crossed the Arabian desert into Palestine and Asia Minor or else traveled around Arabia by water, into Egypt.

For this reason Mesopotamia is a land of special interest to archaeologists. The explorers have dug through layer after layer of debris, representing the accumulations of long centuries of human habitation, and finally have reached virgin soil, below which no human relics are found. In other words, the basic virgin soil, in this Mesopotamian “cradle of civilization,” represents the advent of human habitation there.

These earliest records begin quite suddenly, and at a depth that indicates an age of not more than 6,000 years. They also show that man, at that very early time, was possessed of unusual intelligence and skill and was enjoying a high state of civilization, even superior to that of later times. In other words, the excavations reveal that man has fallen, instead of having gradually evolved to ever greater heights of civilization.

The late Prof. Palmer Hall Langdon, of the Institute of Metals, London, upon his return from extensive work in Mesopotamia in 1929, described his finding of a great “flood deposit” at a considerable depth, and of the layers below it, which contain relics of the civilization that thrived there before the event. We quote from an article in the London Times:

“Below this Flood layer was another, 13 feet in thickness. In the lower part of this stratum were found the remains of brick buildings, which had been abandoned and silted up for many feet … in which were brick tombs. … This layer thus represented two periods—the earlier, when buildings were erected near its base; the later, when, after these buildings had been silted up, these shafts were sunk into it for the great tombs. Both periods had come to an end before the Flood layer was deposited, which is found extending unbroken over the whole site. In this layer (below the Flood layer) were found a number of objects of copper, silver and gold, stone bowls, and a quantity of plain unpainted pottery. At its base was another thin deposit … which Prof. Langdon dates tentatively at 4000 B.C.

“Below this thin layer came another, three feet in thickness. In this were foundations of buildings, paved streets, as well as flint implements, stone vessels, and a large number of beaker-shaped pots, all unpainted. No copper or metal of any kind was found in this layer. At the bottom of this layer, exactly on the present sea level, is a thin layer of mud, which Langdon dates provisionally at 4200 B.C. Even below this thin mud layer were found some pottery of exquisite designs, more beautiful than the pottery of later times, and painted in various colors. After this came the virgin soil, below which there were no remains.”

Prof. Ladd, of the British Museum, who made a careful study of the relics and handicraft of earliest man as found in this ancient cradle of civilization, observed in his book on the history of Ur that the farther down the excavators go, the better become the specimens; and that the pottery found in the most ancient layers just above the virgin soil is the neatest and most artistically colored of all, and that the unpainted pottery made in later times is quite crude in comparison.

The foregoing discoveries of archaeologists not only indicate that earliest historical man was a better artisan than man of later times, but they also show that man did not exist in this cradle of civilization prior to about 6,000 years ago. If men had been there for many thousands of years before that time, why is there no record of them? And if they had gradually evolved to the height of civilization which they then enjoyed, where are the relics which show that gradual evolutionary progress?

Another problem which Darwinists have never been able to explain away is this: If man has been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years, or even for twenty thousand years, multiplying as usual during all that time, why is the planet today so sparsely populated? At the present rate of increase it would not have taken long to amass a population of four billion—even after making allowances for destructive wars, famines, and pestilences. Why, then, do we not ha more than four billion people now on earth if human been multiplying here for as long a period of time as Darwinists claim?

The average rate of increase of various nations and races during a given period of time is not so very difficult to compute. Some peoples, of course, have had more hardships than others, which has limited their increase; but it should be possible to strike a fair average and thereby approximate what the increase of the entire human family should be during sixty centuries. Dr. Williams in his Evolution Disproved mentions the example of the Jewish people. Perhaps no race has experienced greater hardships throughout the centuries than they have suffered. Hence their known rate of increase, under such unfavorable circumstances, should furnish a conservative clue as to what the average rate of increase of the world at large should have been during the 6,000 years since the actual dawn of human history.

If Jacob had lived 60 instead of 38 centuries ago, could he within that time have propagated a race which now would number 4,000,000,000 souls—approximately the world’s present population? If so, then why could not Adam have done precisely the same thing? If, starting with one human pair, it would be possible in 60 centuries to produce a generation of four billion people—such as exists on this earth today—that would dispose of the necessity of insisting upon an extreme age of the human race, at least on that score. Let us now see what Israel’s average rate of increase has been since Jacob’s day.

Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, was the father of the Jewish nation; his twelve sons were the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob was born about 1900 B.C., or a little over 38 centuries ago. The 1935 Jewish Yearbook estimated the number of Jews throughout the world at that time to be about seventeen millions. It is a simple problem in mathematical progression to determine at what rate the house of Jacob had increased to produce that number.

The figure 2, doubled successively for only twenty-four times, i.e., 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc., yields a sum of about seventeen million. Evidently, therefore, the Israelites had doubled their population about twenty-four times during the thirty-eight centuries since Jacob’s day. This would be one doubling every 160 years, approximately. If Israel, throughout the centuries of repeated servitudes, dispersions, and pogroms, could double its population every century and a half, it would seem that all other people should have been able to do as well. Certainly the entire world must have been able to double its population at least once every two centuries, if Israel could do it every 160 years.

If Adam and Eve were created a little over 6,000 years ago, according to Bible records, and the world’s population has doubled once every two centuries (which is even slower than the persecuted Jews had multiplied), then there have been about 31 doublings since Adam’s day. And if we take the figure 2 and double it for 31 times it yields the number 2,147,483,808, which, in fact, was approximately the population of the world in the year 1930. By the year 1976 this figure had again doubled, to about 4,000,000,000 people.

Now, if man has been multiplying on this earth even for 50,000 years or longer, why does not the world have a greater population than four billion today? Even if we take the more conservative estimate of the earth’s population doubling every two centuries, and then add 1,000 years to the length of time the Bible shows that man has been upon this planet, it would allow for five doublings of our population of approximately 4,000,000,000. This would mean that if man has been upon the earth 7,000 years instead of the 6,000 assigned by the Scriptures, there should now be 64,000,000,000 people living here, instead of a mere 4,000,000,000.

Think, then, of the “living room” problems that would have to be faced if man had been multiplying on the earth for 50,000 or 1,000,000 years! It staggers our imagination even more when we think of the crowded conditions which would have developed long ago on every continent and island of the earth if mankind had been multiplying for 1,000,000,000 years, as some would have us believe. Truly, the Bible stands corroborated by plain statistics and common sense, while the wild guesses of the evolutionists have neither science nor reason to support them.

This facing of population facts is thought-provoking from still another standpoint, because it raises the question of how much longer the human race can continue to have room for its natural expansion. The Bible alone solves this problem. It reveals that the commission God gave to the first human pair to propagate their species was limited to the filling of the earth with their offspring. This means that by a divine overruling the increase of population will cease at exactly the proper time.

As found in an earlier chapter, it is the Creator’s plan to restore the dead to life upon this earth. And it is a singular fact that while in a few more years at the present rate of increase the earth would be overcrowded with human beings, yet, at this present point of time there is still room for the living generation as well as for all who have died in the last 6,000 years. We are now at the threshold of the kingdom of God on earth, when his divine purpose for man is about to be consummated. His timing has been perfect. There is still room for all, the living and the dead, who will obey the laws of his kingdom and thereby be privileged to live forever, while in another thousand years or less, there would not be room enough on earth even for the living.

Evolutionists, in their anxiety to assign a fabulous age to mankind, have grasped at every straw of evidence to prove their contention. Failing in their efforts to find skeletons of men farther back in geologic times than the Quaternary or modern era, they have gathered up a few oddly chipped stones (called eoliths) which have been discovered in Pleistocene, Pliocene, Miocene, and other lower strata; and they have set these up as proof that man must have lived back in those very early geologic times—on the assumption that these peculiar stones must have been chipped by human hands.

Now if these ancient eoliths were symmetrical or uniform in shape, like Indian arrowheads, for example, then they would indeed constitute very strong evidence that some intelligent, tool-using creature must have made them, back in remote geologic times. But the fact is they are so crude that the scientists themselves are by no means agreed that they represent the handiwork of man, many geologists contending that they are simply pieces of stone which have been broken into peculiar fragments by the forces of nature—by earth strains, pressures, landslides, frost, water, and ice flows, or other natural means—all of which could have happened during the long geologic ages before the advent of man.

Concerning the present-day scientific discussion relative to these eoliths, we quote the following from Corridors of Time, Vol. 1, p. 89, published jointly by Oxford and Yale Universities:

“The best known type of eoliths is that found in considerable numbers by the late Benjamin Harrison on the plateaux near Ightham in Kent. … Since then they have been found on many sites, and in gravels of varying ages; and the students of early man are divided into two camps as to their artificial origin. They have many enthusiastic supporters; but their artificial nature has been vigorously denied by Boule, Macalister, Hazzledine, Warren, and others.”

And on the same page mention is made of some eoliths found a few years ago at Thenay, imbedded in Tertiary strata, which Bourgeois loudly heralded as specimens of human handicraft dating back to hundreds of thousands of years ago. But concerning them this recent, careful, authoritative Oxford and Yale treatise declares that “today few, if any, believe them to be the work of man.”

Age of Neoliths

In the early layers of the Quaternary, or modern, era we do, of course, find many chipped stone implements, such as arrows, spearheads, and hammers, which certainly were formed artificially, by human hands. But it is doubtful that any of these can be shown to date farther back than 6,000 years, although the evolutionists often try to place them back to ten or twenty thousand years at least. These modern stone implements are called neoliths; and the period in which they were made has been called the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, to distinguish it from the Eolithic, or Old Stone Age—and each of these ages is variously subdivided in the textbooks.

The well-shaped neoliths of more modern times are indisputably of human origin. The existence of such primitive stone implements, however, by no means indicates that the men who made them were of a very low order of intelligence. Rather, they prove the resourcefulness of those early men. Regardless of their intellectual capacity, it naturally took time for them to learn how to make implements out of smelled metallic ores.

But men actually mastered that art very early also—so early, in fact, that the so-called New Stone Age has now become pretty much of a myth; for bronze and iron were being used by some men almost from the beginning of the actual Neolithic period. In substantiation let us quote again from Corridors of Time, Vol. IV. On page 1 of this volume we read:

“It is known that the finely chipped flint arrowhead, long held to be Neolithic, was used by people in the early days of metal. … The Neolithic Age is thus losing its distinctness.”

All this is in harmony with the Genesis account. Although man undoubtedly had to form stone implements at first—just as any man of today would have to do were he suddenly stranded like Robinson Crusoe on an uninhabited isle—yet it was not long after man’s creation until he also learned how to work in metal. Genesis 4:22 tells us that Tubal-cain, who was only the seventh generation from Adam, was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.”

Archaeologists are now discovering the metallic handiwork of these early men, and some of it is remarkable. Says Prof. Ladd, in History and Monuments of Ur, “Those works of art which astonish by their beauty, belong not to the last but to the first ages.”

Thus does modern research continue to confirm the biblical story of creation and to refute the fabulous conjectures of the evolution school, which has long taught the libelous error that our earliest human ancestors were ignorant, apish lowbrows, who lived anywhere from 50,000 to 1,000,000 years ago.

Geologic Strata Not Convincing

Computing the age of fossil remains by the depths or nature of the strata in which they are discovered is by no means accurate. There have been so many local disturbances to the terrain in all parts of the earth throughout the ages that it is impossible to compute geologic time by mere depth, even though the age of the same depth of earth in the immediate locality may be relatively known.

For this reason the discovery of an excavator should be checked by a geologist before the earth immediately surrounding it has been disturbed; otherwise the real significance of the find may never be known. And even a trained geologist often makes miscalculations.

Assuming that certain fossils were found lying in strata which geologists would call Pleistocene, still this would not definitely establish the age of those particular fossils, for the reason that the age of the Pleistocene layers is not the same in all parts of the globe—in one region they may be ancient, while in another region, where the local conditions were vastly different, they may have been laid down much more recently.

None of the geologic strata are continuous throughout the earth, nor are they uniform as to age; notwithstanding the fact that some geologists still carelessly speak of the Pleistocene Age, the Devonian Age, the Carboniferous d the Silurian Age, etc., as though each universally refers definite period of time, and thus lead laymen to suppose the successive layers which have been given the names of Pleistocene, Devonian, Carboniferous, etc., bear the same age wherever found. Such descriptive carelessness has caused much confusion among laymen and has led to a general popular misunderstanding on the subject of “geologic times.”

The fact is, no geologist can determine the age of a given stratum in one part of the earth merely by reference to the estimated age of a corresponding stratum in another part of the globe. Hence, when fossils are found in the same geologic strata in different countries, or even in the same country, that is, in strata bearing the same geologic name—Pleistocene strata, for example—but lying in different regions, it by no means follows that the respective fossils are of the same age; for the different parts of the strata in which they lie may not have been deposited contemporaneously, even though these strata have been given the same relative name or classification. None other than, Prof. Huxley, Darwin’s leading exponent, warned about this very thing. In his Geologic Essays he makes this statement:

“Sir Henry de la Bache adduces conclusive evidence to show that the different parts of one and the same stratum having a similar composition throughout, containing the same organic remains, and having similar beds above and below it, may yet differ to any conceivable extent in age. … For anything that geology and paleontology are able to show to the contrary, a Devonian flora or fauna [vegetable or animal fossil] found in the British Isles may have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in North America and with a Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa.”

The age of any level at which fossil remains may be found is estimated by wholly arbitrary geologic scale, based upon the present rate of terrigenous deposits in certain localities. And because under ordinary modern conditions sedimentation takes place slowly, the prehistorians assume that this rate has been uniform throughout terrestrial history. They seem to disregard the fact that under flood or catastrophic conditions the rate of deposit is vastly accelerated.

Thus in the Somme Valley, where It Is now known that the forests disappeared only a few centuries ago and where peat now grows at the slow rate of less than two inches a century, the investigators at first insisted that the fossil flora and fauna at the bottom of these peat beds must be many thousands of years old since they now are nearly 30 feet below the surface.

These enthusiasts overlooked the now well-known fact that under dense forest and swamp conditions (as once prevailed in the Somme Valley) peat grows so rapidly that within a century it may add two or three feet, not inches, to its depth. This fact was proven when eventually there were found, near the bottom of these same Somme peat beds, relics of Roman pottery, Roman bricks, iron tools, and a boat, which showed that as late as the early Christian era these beds were actually navigable lakes.

The same error in calculation was made by the prehistorians in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark, where the age of the peat bogs was erroneously estimated on the basis of their present growth of an inch or two a century. Yet deep down in these beds have been found Roman roads; and in Ireland, at a depth of 20 feet, was found a relatively modern pair of well-made double-soled shoes and a crock of butter!

These are admittedly only a few centuries old; but according to the scale of estimates adopted by Sir Charles Lyell, father of “orthodox” uniformitarian geology, these relics should be at least 16,000 years old!

Thus it is seen that the more critically one inquires into the actual evidence on which the prehistorians have based their exaggerated estimates of human antiquity, the less convincing it is found to be.

And this is equally true of what some would like us to believe concerning the alleged antiquity of the American Indian. Much has been written and claimed along this line, but without genuine scientific proof. The consensus of opinion among well-informed archaeologists is that the American Indian has inhabited this continent but a few thousand years at the most and that there is no bona fide evidence of any prehistoric predecessors of them on this hemisphere, but that they are related to the Malays of southeast Asia and probably migrated to North America across the Bering Strait or over the Aleutian chain of Islands, which may have formed an uninterrupted land bridge between Asia and North America within historic times.

Certainly every effort to assign to them or to their ancestors an extreme age has failed of proof. The late Dr. Ales Hrdlicka prepared a special bulletin (No. 66) entitled “Recent Discoveries Attributed to Early Man in America,” in which he discussed these mistaken “finds” aforementioned and admitted they are modern.

Prof. Richard S. Lull, Honorable Curator of Peabody Museum, Yale, also sums up the situation in similar fashion. After mentioning that numerous human bones and artifacts have been found in North America in association with Pleistocene mastodon and bison antiquus and that these also agree with the said extinct animal bones in their degree of fossilization, he then nevertheless admits that “the anatomical test does not corroborate the other criteria in point of antiquity, for each specimen presents features in no way different from those of existing North American Indians.

The factual tests applied by true science thus refute the wild theories of evolutionary geologists and paleontologists, both as to the antiquity of these extinct mammal species and as to the age of the strata which contain them. These bones belong to modern Indians; and not even the evolutionists believe that Indians have dwelt here for 500,000 years—the age hastily ascribed to some of these North American “finds.”

Nevertheless the search for proof of human antiquity continues to be pushed with indefatigable zeal. Mr. Edgar Billings Howard, a Philadelphia archaeologist, reported a “find” in New Mexico of a skillfully chipped spearhead and the remains of a camp fire, in association with the bones of elephants and camels; whereupon he conjectured that the man who made the spearhead and the camp fire must have lived there at least fifteen thousand years ago.

But if, as asserted by Prof. Scott mentioned above, even the now extinct mastodon lived on this continent as late as five or six centuries ago, it should not be surprising if we occasionally should find modern Indian spearheads and arrowheads, and the ashes of camp fires, in the same stratum which contains the bones of elephants and camels. A few of these may have roamed the western plains of North America until not so long before the coming of the white man to this new world.

We might continue to examine the claims of evolutionists relative to the age of man, but we feel it is unnecessary to do so. Even they admit that there is no genuine scientific proof to support their fanciful guesses; so why should we accept them instead of the plain teachings of the Scriptures, which do stand up in the light of every actual scientific discovery yet made?

The Scriptures show that we are nearing the end of the present order, or world, which is to be followed by a new world-order, wherein dwelleth righteousness, when Christ and his overcoming church shall reign for a thousand years to restore fallen man to his edenic home.

There are already many evidences which prove that we are now in the day of preparation for the establishment of that kingdom. The prophecies refer to this period as “the time of the end.” (Dan. 12:4) They predict for this time a great increase of knowledge and much running to and fro. We are witnessing the fulfillment of these predictions. It is not, however, increased brain capacity that has brought about this flood of knowledge but the providences of God in fulfillment of the prophecies of his Word and in preparation for the blessings of the new days now near.

Yes, the Bible not only presents an accurate time record of the past, but it also looks ahead and tells us what is to be and when. Without it, as has been well said, history would be “like rivers flowing from unknown sources to unknown seas.” But under the guidance of the Bible we may trace these rivers from their springs and see their glorious endings in the ocean of eternity. We can depend upon the Bible, knowing that He who times the movement of the worlds has just as accurately recorded His timetable of human destiny.

Chapter IV

“IN THE IMAGE OF GOD”

THE Bible tells us that the first man was the direct creation of God and that as he came from the hand of his Creator he bore the divine image. This means that he was perfect in physique and capable of exhibiting those qualities of kindness, sympathy, and love which we naturally attribute to God and which the Scriptures assure us actually belong to him. That man is not perfect today is scripturally attributed to retrogression due to disobedience of divine law. Have scientists been able thus far to produce any proof that this is not true?

Evolutionists claim, on the other hand, that man’s present condition of imperfection is not due to retrogression but to the alleged fact that we are not far enough along on the road of evolution to expect to find man any more perfect than at present, but that as the evolutionary process continues, man of the future will really be more nearly perfect in every way than now. Are scientists able to substantiate this theory of human evolution, or does it as yet continue to be merely an unproved theory? Which is correct, the scriptural view, or the evolution theory? This is the issue we wish to face in this chapter.

There is no question concerning the significant scriptural testimony relative to the origin of man, but there is a serious question as to the meaning of the best evidence thus far produced by scientists to prove that the Bible does not tell the truth on the subject of creation. Let us examine this evidence in the order of its alleged importance. Evolutionists are agreed that paleontology, or the study of fossils, is their most hopeful source of research. Fossils, as all know, are the remains of plants or animals found in or upon the earth; and evolutionists concede that the remains of extinct species which have thus far been found constitute their strongest argument for evolution. Admittedly, however, this falls far short of proof.

It was the dream of Darwin, and it is the hope of all his followers today, that eventually sufficient fossils of extinct and current species may be found to enable scientists to make up a series of such similar structures as will show an unbroken gradation, from the lowest to the highest In order of development, and thereby prove evolution’s case by circumstantial evidence.

But modern paleontologists are not so hopeful of success as were their fellows some years ago. They of course have found many fossils since Darwin’s day and have tried to arrange them in an unbroken series; yet they have so many missing links in their chain of evidence that their fossil record is becoming exceedingly discouraging.

Of course, the science of paleontology is relatively new. No scientist had suspected that there were such things as fossils of extinct species of animals until the beginning of the nineteenth century. At that time some workmen, digging in an old quarry near Paris, found the remains of a prehistoric elephant, which was unlike the skeleton of any known variety of elephant now living on earth.

That opened a new chapter in scientific history. Since then the earth has been combed for specimens of extinct species, in an endeavor to complete the fossil record and thus permit the evolutionists to present a series of skeletons in a progressive chain, each one nearly like its predecessor but showing some small step of improvement, such as Darwin’s theory calls for. In this way they have hoped to prove circumstantially an evolutionary law of development that has operated from the very beginning of life upon this planet.

The scientists have made up a few sectional series of certain types of fossils, each showing more or less similarity to the other, which they fondly display in the museums. But, said the late Prof. C. A. Seward, of Cambridge University, in an article in Nature magazine, “A student who takes an impartial retrospect soon discovers that the fossil record raises more problems than it solves.”

Instead of revealing a perfect gradation from the lowest to the highest in plant and animal structures, as the evolution theory requires, it rather indicates thus far that from time to time during geologic history new and distinct species have suddenly appeared which possess organs and structures that in no way resemble those of any preceding type.

For example: The evolutionists have theorized that reptiles, by several successive minute steps, gradually evolved into birds. Yet the fossil record reveals that birds made their appearance suddenly and dramatically with full feathers and wings; and no intermediate types of creatures between reptiles and birds thus far have been found. Such unbridged gaps as these throughout the fossil record create the unsolved problems to which Prof. Seward alluded in the foregoing quotation, but they agree perfectly with the Bible account of creation.

And the reptile-bird gap is but one of the yawning chasms in the fossil chain, of which the ordinary layman has heard little. Everybody, of course, is familiar with the fact that there is a “missing link” between the so-called anthropoid ape and mankind. But this link, even if it could be found, would not complete the case for organic evolution—there are too many other and even larger gaps that must yet be spanned before Darwin’s theory can be confirmed by the fossil record.

Darwin himself appreciated all this even in his day, and in his Origin of Species he made this frank admission:

“Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. “

Darwin, however, expressed the hope that the many gaps in the fossil record would eventually be filled by further geologic research.

Close to a century has elapsed since Darwin’s death, and geologic research has gone forward on a worldwide scale as never before, but his fond hope has not yet been realized. Indeed, the more the geologist delves into earth’s silent strata, and the more the paleontologist seeks to complete his “finely graduated organic chain,” the more pronounced becomes the divergence between theory and fact, even as Prof. Seward tacitly admits.

Prof. Louis Trenchard More, Dean Emeritus of the University of Cincinnati, also doubtless considers himself a believer in organic evolution. Yet he has this to say:

“The more one studies paleontology [fossils] the more certain does one become that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith it is necessary to have when one encounters the great ‘mysteries’ of religion. The changes that are noted as time progresses show no orderly and no consecutive evolutionary chain and, above all, they give us no clue whatever as to the cause of variation…. The evidence from paleontology is for discontinuity; only by faith and imagination is there continuity of variation.”—Dogma of Evolution, p. 160

The Darwinists have contended that nature makes no leaps, but moves by slow infinitesimal steps of perpetual progress. Yet the fossil record does not confirm that theory. Either nature in the remote past has made sudden, enormous jumps contrary to all human experience and observation, or else there was a special creation of the successive fixed species throughout all geologic times. And certainly the latter idea does not call for any greater degree of faith than does the former.

The fossil record at its very start presents us with several unfilled gaps which no evolutionist ran explain. Fossils from the very earliest strata show wide differentiation of species then in existence, with no intermediate forms to connect one species with another. Prof. Cook, of Cambridge University, says this concerning these earliest living forms in that remotely distant Cambrian geologic era (Cambridge Natural History, Vol. 111, p. 5):

“The first undisputed traces of animal life to appear in the Cambrian epoch, exhibit the same phyletic distinctions as now exist—sponges, echinoderms, mollusca, and worms, formed already, in those immeasurably remote ages, groups apparently as generally distinct from one another as they are at the present time.”

Another conundrum for the evolutionist is the fact that we still have these same types of sponges, molluscan echinoderms, and other Cambrian sea life living on earth today. They have never evolved a step in all these ages, but appear in the same form throughout all geologic strata, down to modern times. Although many of the ancient species have become extinct, nevertheless those which are still in existence look just as they did when they made their initial appearance on earth.

Speaking of the earliest fossils of shellfish, the late Prof. Geoffrey W. Smith, of Oxford University, says in Primitive Animals, p. 91:

“If we examine the fossil shells, and those of the living animals, with the minutest care, we would not be able to detect the smallest difference.”

We thus see, by the admissions of evolutionists themselves, that the Darwinian theory, which has been foisted upon the immature minds of schoolchildren for the past three generations and which has caused the world to believe in it, is recognized by its own sponsors to be faulty at its foundation and unstable throughout its entire structure.

Clearly the following utterances of Dr. D. H. Scott in his epoch-making address sometime ago before the British Association, cannot be disputed:

“For the moment, at all events, the Darwinian period is past. We can no longer enjoy the comfortable assurance that once satisfied so many of us, that the main problem has been solved—all is again in the malting pot. Now, in fact, a new generation has grown up that knows not Darwin.”

Deceptive Museum Exhibits

In view of the frank admissions by the paleontologists that there are numerous unbridged gaps in the fossil record, many doubtless will wonder about the so-called fossil exhibits to be seen in some of our museums. The fact is that these exhibits are artificially arranged, wholly without respect to any chronological sequence, and are therefore plainly deceptive.

These museum exhibits always begin with the smallest and the simplest fossils and gradually go on up to the more complex organisms, without any regard to the time when each of these animals first appeared on earth. Perhaps the largest and the smallest skeletons in the group may be those of animals which actually lived contemporaneously; yet the artificial arrangement of them by the museum managers leads visitors to suppose that the first animal in the group must have lived many millions of years prior to the last and largest one in the group, since that much time apparently would be needed for one to evolve into the other by slow, successive steps.

But what may seem to be evolutionary proof to schoolchildren is far from proof to the studious scientists themselves. Prof. Morgan, heretofore mentioned, in his Critique of the Theory of Evolution, page 9, says:

“Because we can often arrange the ‘series’ of structures in a line extending from the very simple to the most complex, we are apt to become unduly impressed by this fact and conclude that if we found the complete series we should find all the intermediate steps, and that they have arisen in the order of their complexity. This conclusion is not necessarily correct.”

Prof. Johannes P. Lotsy, the late Dutch scientist, also seems to see the utter hopelessness of trying to prove Darwinism by these artificially arranged fossil displays and by guesswork reconstructions made from fragmentary remains. And he should have known what he was talking about, for he was a leading phylogenist who had made reconstructions and fossil exhibits for many years. In Evolution by Hybridization, p., 140, he says:

“Phylogeny, that is, construction of what has happened in the past, is no science but a product of fantastic speculations. Those who know that I have spent a considerable part of my life in efforts to trace the phylogeny of the vegetable kingdom will know that this is not written down lightly; nobody cares to destroy his own efforts.”

Such statements as these by scientists plainly indicate that the modern scientific trend is to agree with the late Dr. Etheridge, who for many years was the great fossil expert of the British Museum and who is quoted by Prof. Townsend in Collapse of Evolution as saying:

“Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. The museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum there is not a particle of evidence of the transformation of species.”

Prof. J. B. Warren, the University of California, is another scientist who seems to agree fully with the foregoing. He is quoted by Dr. Williams in Evolution Disproved as remarking frankly that during the course of human history “there should certainly be known at least a few instances of the evolution of one species from another,” but that “no such instance is known.”

Before we leave this phase of the subject, let us examine the views of scientists relative to three groups of fossil remains, known as (1) The Trinil bones; (2) The Heidelberg jaw; and (3) The Piltdown fragments. These have been considered by some as being evidence that at one time there existed on this earth a race of creatures which, as species, were midway between man and the fictional tertiary apes. No evidence has yet been discovered that these latter ever existed, so in reality there are at least two missing links between ape and man.

(1) The Trinil bones: It is from these bones that the Java man has been imagined. This group of fossil remains consists of an apelike skull, two apelike teeth, and part of a humanlike thighbone, which were found in 1891 at Trinil, Java, in an excavation forty feet below the surface. They were not lying together when found. The teeth were three feet from the skull; and the thighbone, discovered a year later, was nearly fifty feet away.

These bones were found by the late Dr. Eugene Dubois, and from these he built his Java man. But, as related by Dr. William Howells, Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History, in his book published in 1944 entitled Mankind so Far, authorities have ever since 1891 agreed and dissented, accepted and rejected, and quarreled over, the real significance of the Trinil bones.

Dubois, having fairly well established his opinion that he had found the remains of a missing link—scientifically designated Pithecanthropus, meaning erect ape-man—withdrew from the controversy. Twenty years later, however, he reappeared with a radical change of opinion. He had reconstructed his Trinil bones into a true ape instead of an ape-man, supporting his later convictions by several new fragments of fossil femurs.

Dubois died in 1940, convinced that he had not discovered the fossil remains of an ape-man at all. Since then, however, a young geologist, Dr. Von Koenigswald, has made further explorations in Java, with the result that scientists now have no less than three adult skulls in fair shape and parts of the upper and lower jaws with a number of teeth. These, it is claimed, are of the same species as were the fossils found by Dubois.

Upon the basis of these additional discoveries, it has now been quite generally decided that the creatures to which the bones once belonged were not apes at all, but men. The scientists attempt to say, of course, that they were halfway between apes and men, but nevertheless, men. The halfway theory is deduced from the brain capacity indicated by the size and shape of the skull—900 to 1,000 cubic centimeters. The average man of today has about 1,450 cubic centimeters of brain space in his skull. But this is the average, and often it is much less. In his book, Mankind so Far, Dr. Howells says:

“Now there is one point about this which should be made plain, and it is that the size of one’s brain is not an exact index of one’s mental powers. There is only slight relation among modern men between the two, and individuals with normal intelligence occur whose cranial capacity is less than 1,000 cubic centimeters, or halfway back to the ape.”

The Java men, it is admitted, were small in stature—about five feet six inches in height. Naturally their heads would be somewhat smaller than the average of today, and if there are men now with normal intelligence having a brain capacity “halfway back to the ape,” why would it not be possible for the creatures to which the Trinil bones belonged, who had the same brain capacity, to be true men?

(2) The Heidelberg jaw: This is a massive jawbone which resembles an ape’s jaw but has humanlike teeth. It was found near Heidelberg, Germany, in 1907, in a shaft 69 feet below the surface. No other part of the skeleton was found; yet from this one bone the scientific plastic artists have pretended to “reconstruct” the whole creature, just as they have reconstructed the Trinil ape-man from equally flimsy evidence.

This Heidelberg jaw may be that of an extinct and rare species of ape, whose teeth were straight instead of slanting; or it might be that of an abnormal man—a monstrosity or “freak of nature.”

The late Henry Fairfield Osborn, former president of the New York Zoological Society, seems to eliminate this Heidelberg jaw entirely as a “missing link” between ape and man; for on page 99 of his book Men of the Old Stone Age he says concerning this jaw and teeth: “it is absolutely certain that these remains are human. They bear no trace of being intermediate between man and the anthropoid ape.”

Dr. Howells, in Mankind so Far, says concerning the Heidelberg jaw, “It is, of course, not safe to conjecture what the rest of the Heidelberg skull might have been like.”

(3) The Piltdown fragments: This fossil exhibit consists essentially of a small piece of skull, part of a jawbone, three teeth, and two small bones from the nose. These bones were found scattered through a gravel pit, at Piltdown, England, but not all at one time. The finds were made during 1910, 1911, and 1912, and it is not known that they all belong to the same creature or type of creatures.

The accuracy of the reconstructed Piltdown skeleton still remains in question according to Dr. William Howells who, in 1944, again took up the cudgel on behalf of the theory of evolution, in his book Mankind so Far. He describes at length the circumstances surrounding the scattered fragments of the few Piltdown fossils and the furor it has caused. He explains that of the manner in which these specimens were found and the structural differences of the bones, two main controversies have arisen and are still unsettled. He says that the dilemma rests on the incongruous mixture of the skull of a man and the jaw of an ape, “a combination of two extremes rather than a mingling.” Says Dr. Howells:

“The first controversy has the incongruous mandible for its theme. In this, the question at issue is whether Eoanthropus represents a single creature or two different ones. Half of the body scientific accepted the find at its face value, but to others the idea of so human a skull having so simian a jaw was too great an outrage to credulity, and they rebelled with justice.”

Experienced morphologists felt that “the Piltdown man represented a greater illogicality than they had ever seen in their work; that it looked like a sort of immorality in nature.” The other controversy arose out of the fact that in the skeleton reconstruction at no point did any fragments of the skull, except in one dubious instance, touch each other and fit. Says Dr. Howells:

“The anatomists were somewhat taken aback to find that two qualified experts could reach such different ends, and began to doubt as to whether any valid reconstruction could be made from four such ill-fitting fragments as the remains of the Piltdown brain case.”*

* NOTE: Late in 1953, several years after the above was written, scientists discovered that the Piltdown fragments had been deliberately faked by some unknown trickster. It seems that the jawbone and teeth were those of an ape, the teeth having been filed to give them the appearance of being human, and the jawbone discolored to give it the appearance of age. It is now believed that the small piece of skull belonged to a human being.

The more we investigate the evidence found in fossil remains which is supposed to prove the Bible untrue, the more apparent it becomes that this evidence is wholly unconvincing. Man is a direct creature of God, and no fossils yet found disprove this well-established scriptural truth.

We are not, of course, unmindful of the theories which have been developed upon the basis of discovered fossils concerning “Neanderthal” and other “Dawn Men.” We wish to emphasize that they are only theories and are freely admitted as such by many of the world’s leading scientists. These theories have been made to mean more to the general public than the weight of evidence back of them warrants, by the cleverness of reconstruction artists. Their “reconstructions,” as we have seen, are wholly artificial, and they invariably represent early man as bearing a very close resemblance to the ape.

But the plastic artists who made them knew no more about what early man looked like than does anyone else—they simply drew upon their vivid imagination. Dr. Howells now has decided that the Neanderthal man was as intelligent as we of today, which, he states, is a compliment to us. He also had a religion, Dr. Howell asserts—probably crude, but it emphasizes his wide separation from the brute creation.

Structural Similarities

Much literature has been written under this head in an attempt to prove the alleged law of natural evolution. Such books point out various anatomical similarities in the different species of animals—also structural similarities in the many plant families. They contend that this suggests kinship through evolution; for example, man’s arm and hand bear a resemblance to that of the ape and indeed are somewhat like the forefoot of the dog, rat, or cat.

There is also the general similarity in the construction of the backbone of nearly all vertebrate animals. There are also resemblances between the heart, stomach, and other organs and structures, in nearly all the animal species, including man. Some scientists argue that it is not reasonable to believe that such complex, yet similar, things have arisen independently. But this is only an opinion and proves nothing.

To those who accept the Bible account of creation it seems reasonable that there should be structural similarities, for the simple reason that the same mechanical and biological principles are commonly involved. The same thing is true in mechanics generally, and in architecture, or in any of the arts. Buildings frequently employ the same architectural principles because they are intended to perform similar functions, but this does not imply that the one has evolved from the other.

Common anatomic resemblances no more prove that man was evolved from the ape than architectural resemblances prove a kinship between St. Peter’s in Rome and a Masonic temple. There are close anatomic resemblances between a dog and a lion, yet evolutionists do not even place them in the same group; for the one is a canine and the other a feline. Neither should man be grouped with the anthropoid ape simply because of certain anatomical similarities.

But why stress resemblances and overlook the enormous divergences? There are quite as many differences as there are similarities between them. Is it not just as reasonable to suppose that the differences disprove the theory of evolution as it is to conjecture that the similarities prove it? In any event, the one theory at least offsets the other, and we are left again without real proof that the Bible is in error in stating that man was created directly by God and in the divine image.—Gen. 1:26

Evolutionists also rely on genetics as one means of proving their theory. This phase of the subject is discussed in chapter two and found to be void of any actual proof that one species of either plant or animal life has ever evolved into another. Hence, no matter which way the evolutionist turns, he finds himself still a theorist, and a very unreasonable one at that.

The Bible story of creation, on the other hand, is harmonious with the actual discoveries of science. It also accords most fully with reason. Adam and Eve were created perfect, in the mental and moral image of God—so much so that even in his fallen state, God can say to him, “Come now, and let us reason together.” (Isa. 1:18) Adam and Eve could have lived here on the earth forever had they obeyed divine law.

Many scientists say it should be possible for living cells to rebuild or multiply themselves indefinitely if given a perfect environment. The Scriptures assure us that this great boon, which was lost by Adam, will be restored by Christ, that all mankind will be provided with the necessary perfect environment, which will enable them to live forever.—Acts 3:19-21

Chapter V

“OF THE DUST OF THE GROUND”

ONLY the infinite wisdom and mighty power of the Creator could combine the chemical elements of the earth in such proportions and in such a composition as to form the bodily organism of man. David said of himself that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and the more we learn about the human body, the more fully we realize the truth of the prophet’s statement.—Ps. 139:14

And beyond the complexities of the human organism itself is the miraculous manner in which it is made to live. No more profound truth was ever recorded than that contained in the explanation that God breathed into the nostrils of the human body he had created and it “became a living soul.”

Great truths are often simple. We are apt to overlook the realities of understandable facts by searching unnecessarily for some hidden meaning which does not exist except as we create it by our own imagination. That the human organism is formed of the dust of the ground is a scientific fact. That the breath is essential to life is also well-established by human experience. Science has no quarrel with the Bible up to this point. Actually, when the Bible is properly understood it is found to be in harmony with all proven facts of science relative to the nature of man.

In this closing chapter of our discussion it is the viewpoint of professed orthodox religious philosophers rather than that of the real scientists with which we take issue. Science can never be in harmony with much of the religious philosophy which falsely claims to be based upon the teachings of the Bible.

Theology insists that man is more than the Bible claims for him; that in addition to the breath of life, God implanted in his human creature an indefinable something called an “immortal soul,” which, being independent of the body even though residing in it, continues to live after the body dies. Thus, claim the theologians, man is inherently immortal, hence cannot die—therefore there is no death.

This philosophy is both unscientific and unscriptural. God holds the secret of life in his own custody, so that it is not possible for us to understand why the union of the breath of life with the fleshly organism results in a “living soul”; but, plainly, it is the union of the two that results in forming the living soul. The soul is not a separate entity. There is no scientific or scriptural reason to suppose that the Creator implanted something additional in the human organism to make it live which he did not impart to the lower forms of earthly life.

A proper rendering of the original text in Genesis 1:30 indicates that the lower animals are living souls even as is man. They were all made of the dust of the ground, and all received the breath of life. To this scientists will give assent. Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 reaffirms this fundamental truth of the Scriptures, declaring that men and beasts all have the same breath and that in death there is no difference.

Scientists may not agree that man dies because of being a sinner, a transgressor of divine law, though they do accept the fact that death is a reality. But there are comparatively few theologians who are prepared to accept the teachings of the Scriptures on this point. They may agree that man is a sinner, but they do not agree that he dies because of this. Death, they say, is merely the gateway into another life; and when the Scriptures refer to death as a punishment for sin, it means merely a separation from God, not a literal dying, a ceasing to live. Hence in this particular phase of the subject, we find ourselves more in harmony with scientists than with theologians.

It is not surprising that the Bible goes beyond the findings of science in its presentations of facts; for, after all, as a revelation of God’s purpose in the creation of man, it tells us not only of his original creation but also of his final destiny. Scientists may say that man’s sure destiny is death, but the Bible says that there is to be a resurrection of the dead—a re-generation.—Acts 24:15; Matt. 19:28

Job stated the matter with scientific correctness when he asked, “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14) If Job had been a modern theologian he would have inquired, “When a man seems to die, is he really dead?” Job knew that when a man dies he is dead; and with this science agrees. Job also had faith to believe that dead men shall live again, and Jesus confirms this belief in the statement to Martha when discussing the death of her brother, Lazarus: “Though he were dead, yet shall he live.”—John 11:25

It is only as we accept the teaching of the Scriptures concerning the reality of death that we are able to understand God’s